In the current hydrodynamic research relating to planing hulls, the stern flap and steps are generally considered to be two independent resistance reduction measures. Limited research has focused on the coupled effects of flaps and steps. Therefore, experimental and numerical simulation methods are carried out in this paper to explore the influence of the flap mounting angle coupled with the steps. A series of model towing tests were implemented for a double-stepped planing hull with 2°, 3° and 4.5° flap angles. The test results show that, as the mounting angle increased, the low speed resistance performance was improved and the porpoising critical speed was delayed, with a slight resistance cost. Based on the tests, a numerical simulation method was established with volume Froude numbers ranging from 0.88 to 5.20. The simulated hull flow field showed good agreement with the testing data. The simulation results suggest a cavity induces the negative pressure after the steps; the cavity core region is the air phase, and this expands with the air–water mixture flow. The cavity also causes wetted surface reduction and pressure distribution changes. Finally, comparisons of cavities after-steps and load coefficients of different planing surfaces among models were considered. Numerical results analysis gave distinct interpretations for the experimental phenomenon of porpoising critical speed increasing with a slight resistance increment.

In order to investigate the drag-reducing effect of air intake, forward motion of planing trimaran models in calm water were simulated for Froude numbers ranging from 3.14–5.87. The hull body motion is implemented by coupling the fluid solver with motion solver. Numerical results were compared with the experimental data and showed good agreement. Contrastive calculations of models with and without air intake show that the air intake presents evident drag-reducing effect when Froude number is above 4.49, the cambered configuration of air intake could amplify air cavity and thus decrease fractional resistance. CFD incremental studies were subsequently carried out for the camber of air intake, it is found that the model with chamber-shortened air intake shows the worst resistance performance, while enlarging air intake chamber could reduce resistance at Froude numbers between 4.06 and 4.97.