Ship performance has become more important than ever in a market where operating margins are low and emissions regulations are tightening. Ship owners are often required to make quick decisions about design changes or modifications which affect performance. In this regard, rapid turnaround time is just as important as accuracy in order to meet the tight deadlines often present in a ship design project.

In order to meet this challenge, ABS' Energy Efficiency CFD team has developed an automated system which allows CFD simulations to be run much faster than traditional wisdom would suggest. This automated system makes it possible to turn around accurate ship design evaluations in a very short amount of time, even when project deadlines are short. This same system is also used in performing hull form optimization where the CFD tool is coupled with a parametric design tool. This allows for hundreds of simulations a day to be run on an HPC cluster, resulting in highly improved hull forms in a matter of days.