CFD Model Estimates of the Airflow Distortion over Research Ships and the Impact on Momentum Flux Measurements

Abstract

Wind velocity and air-sea turbulent flux measurements made from shipborne instruments are biased due to the effect of the ship on the flow of air to the instruments. The presence of the ship causes the airflow to a particular instrument site to be either accelerated or decelerated, displaced vertically, and sometimes deflected slightly in the horizontal. Although recognized for some time, it is only recently that the problem has been addressed using three-dimensional computational fluid dynamics (CFD) models to simulate the flow over particular ships, quantify the effects of flow distortion, and hence correct the ship-based measurements. It has previously been shown that this improves the calculated momentum fluxes by removing disparities between data from different ships, or from instruments in different locations on the same ship.