Estimation of added resistance and ship speed loss in a seaway

The prediction of the added resistance and attainable ship speed under actual weather conditions is essential to evaluate the true ship performance in operating conditions and assess environmental impact. In this study, a reliable methodology is proposed to estimate the ship speed loss of the S175 container ship in specific sea conditions of wind and waves. Firstly, the numerical simulations are performed to predict the added resistance and ship motions in regular head and oblique seas using three different methods; a 2-D and 3-D potential flow method and a Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) with an Unsteady Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes (URANS) approach. Simulations of various wave conditions are compared with the available experimental data and these are used in a validation study. Secondly, following the validation study in regular waves, the ship speed loss is estimated using the developed methodology by calculating the resistance in calm water and the added resistance due to wind and irregular waves, taking into account relevant wave parameters and wind speed corresponding to the Beaufort scale, and results are compared with simulation results obtained by other researchers. Finally, the effect of the variation in ship speed and therefore the ship speed loss is investigated. This study shows the capabilities of the 2-D and 3-D potential methods and CFD to calculate the added resistance and ship motions in regular waves in various wave headings. It also demonstrates that the proposed methodology can estimate the impacts on the ship operating speed and the required sea margin in irregular seas.