Abstract
In solving the unsteady potential flow problem of the ship in waves with the panel method, in general one can consider the basic flow as the free stream or double body solution. For the double body solution, the body boundary condition has the 2nd derivatives of the velocity potential. Low order panel methods are known to suffer from the significant error in the 2nd derivatives computed at the body surface. This paper analyzes the numerical error in the 2nd derivatives for a 2-D cylinder and a 3-D sphere problem, and an extrapolation method to obtain the correct derivatives on the body surface is suggested.