OS Ocean Science OS Ocean Sci. 1812-0792 Copernicus Publications Göttingen, Germany 10.5194/os-9-855-2013 Mapping flow distortion on oceanographic platforms using computational fluid dynamics O'Sullivan N. 1 Landwehr S. 1 Ward B. 1 School of Physics and Ryan Institute, National University of Ireland, Galway, Ireland 17 10 2013 9 5 855 866 Copyright: © 2013 N. O'Sullivan et al. 2013 This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this licence, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ This article is available from https://os.copernicus.org/articles/9/855/2013/os-9-855-2013.html The full text article is available as a PDF file from https://os.copernicus.org/articles/9/855/2013/os-9-855-2013.pdf

Wind speed measurements over the ocean on ships or buoys are affected by flow distortion from the platform and by the anemometer itself. This can lead to errors in direct measurements and the derived parametrisations. Here we computational fluid dynamics (CFD) to simulate the errors in wind speed measurements caused by flow distortion on the RV <i>Celtic Explorer</i>. Numerical measurements were obtained from the finite-volume CFD code OpenFOAM, which was used to simulate the velocity fields. This was done over a range of orientations in the test domain from −60 to +60° in increments of 10°. The simulation was also set up for a range of velocities, ranging from 5 to 25 m s<sup>−1</sup> in increments of 0.5 m s<sup>−1</sup>. The numerical analysis showed close agreement to experimental measurements.

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