SHORTCUt; (Ship Hydrodynamics in OpenFOAM: Routines, Templates and Custom Utilities) is an Open Source toolbox for conducting ship performance calculations using the OpenFOAM CFD suite. Its purpose is to provide a shortcut around the many steps needed to set up a successful ship performance calculation in OpenFOAM.
The toolbox originated as a framework for coupling simplified propeller models with OpenFOAMs Finite Volume CFD solvers. This framework still forms the basis of the ship performance calculations. It is now however, complemented by a range of custom pre- and post-processing tools in order to automate meshing, setting of boundary conditions, ship performance estimates and more. In order to give the user a familiar environment, these tools have been developed with standard naval architecture nomenclature in mind.
Calculations performed using SHORTCUt are competitive against the current state of the art of marine CFD. The predicted power requirement of a bulk carrier, with and without an energy saving duct in front of the propeller is shown below. SHORTCUt fares well against leading institutions participating in the same benchmark case (predictions are ranked from left to right according to correspondence with experimental predictions). This calculation was performed using SHORTCUts default settings on an ultrabook laptop in around 24h. Users with more available computing power could potentially achieve even better results.
In terms of local flow predictions SHORTCUt also fares well. The predicted axial wake velocities, using two of SHORTCUts propeller models, at the aft perpendicular are shown below (adjacent to the experimentally measured distribution.)
For details about this calculation and other benchmark cases, see the validation page. For information about the Yamazaki and BEMt propeller models, see the theory page.
