Hydrodynamic of planing hulls through a 2D+t approach

In this paper a 2D+t approach for studing the hydrodynamics of fast planing hulls is presented. Through a simple relation between time and space variable, the planing hull is regarded as an impacting 2D body with variable contour shape- The study is carried out in the frame of potential flow of an incompressible fluid with gravity and surface tension effects also neglected. The unsteady flow taking place in the transversal plane is computed through a boundary elements formulation and nonlinearities in the free surface boundary conditions are fully retained. Attention is mainly focused at evaluating the pressure distribution on the hull wetted surface. The method is applied to prismatic hulls and to more complex hull geometries with convex or concave bottom. Some preliminary comparisons versus experimental data and other numerical results available, are presented.