Hydrocontest: Computational Fluid Dynamics of hydrofoils

This project is developed within the scope of HydroContest which is an inter-school competition for the design of a racing boat with a high focus on energetic efficiency; the goal is to maximize the speed of the boat under the constraint of a limited power source. Hydrofoils are especially interesting since they offer an important reduction of drag at high speeds while remaining cost efficient. Within the contest, this project aims at delivering a prediction tool for the hydrofoil performance using numerical simulations of the incompressible Navier-Stokes equations approximated by the means of the Finite Element method with suitable stabilization techniques, such as the Variational Multiscale Method; we consider P1 Finite Elements with a second order BDF time discretization scheme. An automated meshing script was developed to handle arbitrary foil geometries and angles of attack. The numerical simulations were conducted using the LifeV Finite Element Library in a parallel setting. Satisfactory results have been obtained using this approach for Reynolds numbers up to 1 million.