Recent developments on CFD and CAD integration has opened new possibilities to improve the efficiency and quality of the hydrodynamic design process. Specialized software for ship hydrodynamics can automatically configure the simulations, create grids and create reports based on the draft and speed conditions. This significantly reduces the lead time and the training of the users and benefits organizations with varying resources and levels of application complexity.

This is illustrated in the paper by three examples based on SHIPFLOW. The first example demonstrates an integration where ship designers can manage CFD simulations directly from the CAD environment. Another examples shows a tight integration of CAD, optimization and CFD which gives better possibilities for shape optimizations. While the forebody can be optimized with potential flow solvers, aftbody optimization requires more time consuming RANSE solvers. The built in capability for self-propulsion simulations can be effectively applied in the latter case, the power can be used directly as the objective instead of less precise wake quality measures. The overlapping grid technique makes it also well suited for optimization of appendages. This is illustrated in a final example on energy saving devices.