Improvement of ships seakeeping performance by application of the full-scale CFD simulations

The ship's fuel economy is increasingly important. The paper presents the effect of redesigning a case study ship for increasing seakeeping performance. Selected wave parameters reflect very difficult operational conditions existing on the North Sea and the Baltic Sea. The analyzed variants of a case study ship represent the latest developments of modern hull forms. The concepts similar to V-shaped bulbous bow, X-bow, X-aft, B-bow were adopted. Full-scale CFD simulations were performed to analyze the influence of innovative hull forms on the added resistance, heave and pitch motions for head waves and two vessel speeds. It was found that with the use of Full-scale CFD simulations it is possible to capture phenomena that cause ship's non-linear behavior. The calculated relation between added resistance and ships' vertical motions was opposite to linear strip theory. It proves that the results obtained by linear strip theory method and the CFD can differ significantly.