Computational Investigation of Pitch Motion of a High-Speed Craft Incorporated with Trim-Tabs

An excessive trim by stern on a high-speed craft is vulnerable to decrease comfortable ride incorporated with the large pitch motion. To prevent such problem, the craft is then equipped with a device known as “trim-tabs” providing a lift force at the stern region, which leads to reduce pitch angle/trim of the craft. This paper presents computational modelling of trim-tabs on high-speed craft towards reducing the pitch motion in the calm water condition. Here, the commercial Computational Fluid Dynamic (CFD) software; called Numeca Fine Marine has been accordingly utilised to evaluate several effects of Froude numbers (Fr) and angle of the trim-tabs into characteristics of the lift force of the high-speed craft. The results revealed that the pitch motion of the high-speed craft equipped with the trim-tabs (5o) has significantly reduced up to 76% at Fr = 1.0. This can be explained that the installed trim-tabs has increased the negative trim moment, which inherently creates the restoring moment pushing the stern up along the pitch-axis. Meanwhile, this may cause involuntary the total ship’s resistance increased. In general, this simulation pointed out the advantage of the trim-tabs to increase the comfortability of the high-speed craft.