Competitive products require an optimal design that complies with the market requirements of high performance and energy efficiency. SVA Potsdam, having a long tradition and an outstanding expertise  in ship hydrodynamics as well as in the field of computational fluid dynamics combines these skills into a comprehensive service with respect to form optimisation, employing inviscid or viscous flow solvers.
Integrating viscous flow solvers in an optimisation cycle offers the outstanding possibility of aft ship optimisations, which can be conducted in model or full-scale and hence make the extrapolation of model scale results to full-scale dispensable. Furthermore scale effects can be assessed.
The parametric form description is set up within the software  FRIENDSHIP-FRAMEWORK offering the possibility for effective shape variation within an optimisation environment providing stochastic, deterministic and genetic optimization algorithms.

Ship form optimization

SVA Potsdam has developed a parametric ship hull description for the optimisation of the fore- and aft-ship lines. As optimisation objectives the ship resistance is and remains a prior design criterion and will probably gain further importance, due to the forecast development of the bunker fuel market. By applying viscous flow solvers the optimisation of the fore and aft-ship is possible.
The wake field is most often not included as design objective. However, the homogeneity of the wake field is crucial for the propeller design and is also relevant regarding the propeller induced pressure pulses, which is a major source for vibration and noise.

The benefits for the clients are:

- Reduced fuel consumption
- Reduced carbon dioxide emission leads to more environmentally friendly ships
- Reduced eccentricity of propeller forces, due to higher wake homogeneity
- Propeller design can be better adapted to inflow conditions, in case of higher wake homogeneity
- Optimisation can be conducted in full-scale, extrapolation from model test results is not necessary

Fore ship optimisation:

Wave pattern around ship, baseline (top) vs. optimised (bottom) design

Measured effective power, baseline vs. optimised design

Integration of other optimisation objectives is possible.