Numerical and Experimental Analysis of Added Resistance of Ships in Waves

Two Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) based field methods numerically predicted added resistance in regular head waves for a 14,000 TEU containership and a medium size cruise ship. Long and short waves of different frequencies were considered. Added resistance was decomposed into diffraction and radiation force components, whereby diffraction forces were obtained by restraining the ship in waves and radiation forces by prescribing the motions of the ship in calm water. In short waves, the diffraction part of total resistance was dominant as almost no ship motions were induced. In long waves, the sum of diffraction and radiation forces exceeded total resistance, i.e., the interaction of these two force components, which caused the reduction of total resistance, needed to be accounted for. Predictions were compared with model test measurements. Particular emphasis was placed on the following aspects: discretization errors, frictional resistance as part of total added resistance in waves, and diffraction and radiation components of added resistance in waves. Investigations comprised two steps, namely, a preliminary simulation to determine calm water resistance and a second simulation to compute total resistance in waves, always using the same grids. Added resistance was obtained by subtracting calm water resistance from total averaged wave resistance. When frictional resistance dominated over calm water resistance, which holds for nearly all conventional ships at moderate Froude numbers, high grid densities were required in the neighborhood surrounding the hull as well as prism cells on top of the model's surface.