The Hydrodynamic Wake of a Surface Ship: Theoretical Foundatons

A model for the hydrodynamic wake of a surface ship is developed. Neglecting only ambient stratification and ambient surface films, we begin with general equations and boundary conditions for the flow field and reduce the problem to a solvable one through a series of approximations. Among the assumptions are l the fluid dynamics are independent of the gas particle bubble dynamics 2 the ship undergoes only small motions about a uniform, mean motion 3 the free surface elevations are small and 4 the ship induced turbulence is significantly stronger than the ambient turbulence. With these approximation, the overal problem becomes separable into one governing the ship induced flow in otherwise still water and one governing the interaction of the background with the ship induced flow.