Professor of Mechanical Engineering Frederick Stern and co-PI Yugo Sanada have received three new grants totaling $1.3M from the Office of Naval Research, including a highly competitive Defense University Research Instrumentation Program (DURIP) award.

Stern, who is also an IIHR research engineer and the George D. Ashton Professor of Hydroscience and Engineering, joined IIHR in 1983. Since then, he has led IIHR’s ship hydrodynamics research program and brought in more than $41M in grant funding, some of which has provided a significant portion of the funding for the development and instrumentation of IIHR’s towing tank and wave basin facilities. Both of these world-renowned, state-of-the-art facilities use the most advanced measurement systems to provide essential experimental data for physical understanding and CFD validation in ship hydrodynamics

Stern and Sanada will use the DURIP funding to acquire an instrumentation system to support his complementary ONR grant, titled “Global and Local Flow Modeling and Validation Experiments for Free-Running Office of Naval Research Tumblehome (ONRT) Surface Combatant Maneuvering in Waves.” The ONR Tumblehome or ONRT is an experimental model ship hull frequently used in fundamental research.

The instrumentation will support global and local flow modeling and validation experiments using the ONRT at the IIHR Wave Basin and Towing Tank. The equipment includes:

• Load cells and amplifiers to measure propeller side forces; rudder axial and side forces; and yaw moment, as well as metal propellers for enhanced volumetric local flow velocity measurements;

• Six degrees of freedom (6DoF) soft spring mount (surge, sway, and yaw linear motor) to measure horizontal wave drift forces (X,Y) and moment (N) during the model maneuvers; and

• Instrumentation for increased accuracy of the tracking system and the wavemaker controller, as well as lenses for increased resolution of the four-dimensional particle tracking velocimetry (4DPTV).

The three-year research project combines IIHR’s extensive experience with towing tank experiments using captive model ships for local flow measurements (wave elevations and 4DPTV), and wave basin research on free running and semi-captive model ships to gather 6DoF measurements. The experiments will build on previous data but with a focus on conditions that have not previously been measured.

The third ONR award, “Global and Local Flow Modeling and Validation Experiments for Free-running KCS Maneuvering in Waves,” also uses the new instrumentation for similar research for a Korea Research Institute of Ships and Ocean Engineering (KRISO) Container Ship (KCS).

About ONR

As an executive branch agency within the Department of Defense, the Office of Naval Research (ONR) provides technical advice to the U.S. Navy. IIHR has received funding from the Office of Naval Research since the mid-1950s.

For more information, visit the ONR website.