Hi all,
I’m currently doing an internship in a ship design office.
My task is it to evaluate different cfd programs in order to perform initial hull optimization inhouse.
We want to use potential theory algorithms for wave resistance analyzes in particular wave pattern, pressure/velocity distribution over the hull and wave cuts.
Our first choice is OpenFOAM® since financial aspects play a major role.
Also the fact that you can customize the code for your needs looks attracting to us.

So last week I made a big research upon this topic and I figured out that there are many things to observe. Though I have some basic experience with OpenFOAM® (I once was allowed to play with calculating parameters and see their impact on the final result, with icofoam for a term paper) some questions come up to me:

Meshing is one of the crucial points and I wonder if there is a proper mesh generator/converter/manipulator included in OpenFOAM®.
I know that there are a lot of codes included for these tasks, but are they also capeable of modelling more complex meshes including ships appendices such as bilgekeels, nozzles, rudders, bow thrusters and so on. Further I read that SALOME has been used for mesh generation also for ships, but how reliable is that and can it meet the requirements?

As mentioned above we want as a start just use the potential theory. Is it therefore convenient to use potentialFOAM or are there other solvers that are more appropriate especialy when it comes to hull optimization. Or is it even better to create an own solver that fullfills the special needs we demand?
I saw one test case of Kevin Maki and Bill Rosemurgy from the university of Michigan published on the 4th OpenFOAM® Workshop in Montreal, Quebec in 2009 what looked quite interesting to me. But this "experiment" is just validated for slender hull forms with the thin ship theory and we would like to extend this for general hull forms using the more simple potential theory.
So my question is if you have some more codes validated with test cases, such as the Kriso VLCC or Containervessel KCS.
Another problem that occures, how does OpenFOAM® deal with free surfaces?

I hope you can help me out and maybe give me some further hints.
If you have some further questions don’t hesitate to ask me!

Thanks for your trouble!

Colin