Studying the Hydrodynamic Characteristics of Sprint Master canoe Omar Yaakob, Y. Ahmed, M. Rizal Othman Department of Marine Technology Faculty of Mechanical Engineering Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM), Skudai, Malaysia omar@fkm.utm.my , Yasser@mail.fkm.utm.my Abstract- The hydrodynamic characteristics of the Sprint Master canoe that is used in Universiti Teknology Malaysia (UTM) have been studied at different speeds using experimental and Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) methods. The experimental tests for the canoe have been conducted in the UTM marine lab. The RANSE code Ansys CFX has been used for carrying out the numerical simulations for the hull form of the canoe at the same experimental speeds. The Volume of Fluid method (VOF) has been used with Ansys CFX for capturing the free surface flow around the canoe hull at the various speeds. The numerical simulations conditions are the ones for which experimental results exist. The Shear Stress Transport (SST) turbulence model has been used in the RANSE code. The grid generator ICEM CFD has been used for building the hybrid grids for the RANSE code solver. The results compare well with the experimental results of the canoe especially at the slow speeds. Keywords-canoe; Sprint Master; CFD; resistance I. INTRODUCTION As a developing country, Malaysia is improving the quality of life of its citizens. Many facilities have been built in the country on the development including sports facilities. There are many types of water sports in Malaysia such as swimming, jumping, scuba diving, yachting, canoeing and many more. Kayaks and canoes become an increasingly popular means of enjoying sport and leisure boating activities in Malaysia. Kayaks resemble canoes in that both are long, narrow, lightweight paddle boats which are pointed at both ends. Like canoes, kayaks have a hull, which is the hollow bottom shell of the boat. The main difference that separates the two is that canoes are propelled by single bladed paddle while kayaks are propelled using two bladed paddle. Generally, Kayak is a type of canoe and the word canoe can be used for describing both kayak and canoe [1]. There are two main types of canoes: C-boat (Canadian) and K-boat (Kayak) [2]. The first type is usually manufactured using many different materials, its length is around 5 m, and the paddler is usually kneeling while paddling the canoe. The other type, K-boat, is closed decked vessel, usually used by one person, and the paddler is usually sitting while paddling a kayak. Different materials are used for constructing canoes such as: wood, canvas, aluminum, fiberglass, Kevlar and Royalex [3]. Indeed, the Navier-Stokes Equations (NSE) can be used with the turbulent flow method for simulating free surface flow around the floating bodies such as canoe. Through a discretization scheme, e.g. finite volume method (FVM), the governing fluid equations are solved numerically. The numerical discretization schemes usually need special treatments to avoid their undesired nonphysical distortion, such as strong numerical diffusion in the wave pattern. The simulation of the free surface flow around a ship hull form based on the NSE is usually carried out by the interface- tracking method, e.g. a moving mesh method [4,5], and the interface-capturing method, e.g. the volume of fluid method (VOF) [6,7]. The mesh elements in the first method moves over an underlying fixed Eulerian grid for tracking a free surface flow pattern around ship hull. This mesh only covers the domain involving the water, where the free surface forms the upper boundary of the computational domain and is determined as part of the solution. This approach can be applied for moving boundary problems, but special treatments are required for simulating problems of large deformation such as breaking waves. In the interface-capturing method, both air and water are considered in the simulation and treated as two effective fluids. The numerical grids in this method are fixed in space, and the predication of the free surface location is achieved by solving an additional transport equation. In this research work the towing tank of the UTM marine lab was used for measuring the total resistance of the Sprint Master canoe at 3, 4, 5 and 6 knots. Moreover, the finite volume RANSE code Ansys CFX was used to numerically simulate the viscous free surface flow around the hull form of the canoe at the same speeds to study the flow pattern around the canoe hull and to investigate its hydrodynamic characteristics at the different speeds. The SST and the ε - k turbulence models were used with Ansys CFX, but only the results of SST were presented in this paper because these results were more accurate. The predicted numerical results and the experimental results were compared. Finally, this study is representing the first step for determining a suitable scientific way to modify the hull form of the Sprint Master Canoe to improve its hydrodynamic properties. International Conference on Applications and Design in Mechanical Engineering 2012 (ICADME 2012) 27-28 February 2012, Penang, Malaysia.