Investigation on the Results Scalability of Towing Tank Tests Performed on a Planing Air Cavity Ship

Towing tank tests are useful for evaluating the performance of hulls. One limitation of these tests is that large hulls cannot be tested at a 1:1 scale. However, although the tests are conducted on scaled models, the results can be scaled using ITTC (International Towing Tank Conference) procedures to provide a prediction of the full-scale model behaviour. Full-scale models, on the other hand, can be directly tested using CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) simulations, which do not have size limitations. In the present study, an ACS (Air Cavity Ship) hull model was tested in a 1:6 scale in a towing tank with and without air injection, with the full-scale results being derived from these tests. A towing tank scale and a full-scale CFD model were created in Simcenter Star-CCM +. The study aims to evaluate the results of the CFD models in terms of hull resistance and to analyse the shape of the air trapped under the hull in both scales.