Numerical simulation of the unsteady flow past a hydrofoil

The two-dimensional unsteady flow about a hydrofoil moving beneath a free surface is studied by an inviscid model with embedded vorticity, generated through a suitable unsteady Kutta condition. The mathematical problem is recast in terms of boundary integral equations for which an accurate and efficient solver is developed and coupled with a Runge-Kutta time marching scheme. Favorable comparisons with both experimental data and computations performed by different numerical techniques are reported for a large variety of test cases, involving also details of breaking waves kinematics.