Naval Architecture and Hydrodynamics Research Group

SCC is home to TalTech Naval Architecture and Hydrodynamics Research Group led by Professor Mihkel Kõrgesaar.

Research focuses on the behaviour of small crafts, ships and marine structures in normal and extreme environments. Our driving motivation is to enable better, safer, and more energy-efficient future ship concepts that serve societal and industrial needs.

Hydrodynamics

The group’s first field of research is Hydrodynamics and Fluid-structure interaction. The goal here is to increase the energy efficiency and to improve the behavior of watercraft in different operational conditions.

The research is supported by the competence centre infrastructure that connects the possibilities of a towing tank and computer simulations. The SCC research infrastructure enables scientists to emulate weather conditions and accidents and to investigate ship behaviour in various situations and operational conditions.

Ship Structures

In the field of ship structures, novel computational methods are studied and created to evaluate the behaviour of ship structures at accidental and ultimate limit states. Such knowledge is especially important for assessing risks linked to collision and grounding accidents. The traditional simplified methods used in shipbuilding do not include all relevant factors. An effective computational method is a user-friendly tool that allows justified simplifications to quickly design big and complex structures. It is the job of scientists to define the scope of the simplifications.

The main research methods in the study of ship structures are material tests and numerical simulations. Computer simulations provide an overview of the processes at work in materials and constructions while experimental tests are used to validate hypotheses and discover new deformation and fracture mechanisms.

The research group welcomes international interns! Please see https://taltech.ee/incoming-internship.