Wind Loads on Ships and Offshore Structures Estimated by CFD

Wind loads on ships and offshore structures could until recently be determined only by model tests, or by statistical methods based on model tests. By the development of Computational Fluid Dynamics or CFD there is now a realistic computational alternative available. In this paper, wind loads on a seagoing ferry and on a semisubmersible offshore platform have been estimated by CFD. The results have been compared with wind tunnel model tests and, for the ferry, a few full-scale measurements, and good agreement is obtained. The CFD method offers the possibility of a computational estimate of scale effects related to wind tunnel model testing. An example of such an estimate on the ferry is discussed. Due to the time involved in generating the computational mesh and in computing the solution, the CFD method is not at the moment economically competitive to routine wind tunnel model testing.