Investigation of ship responses in regular head waves through a Fully Nonlinear Potential Flow approach

In this study, the hydrodynamic performance of a ship in terms of motions and resistance responses in calm water and in regular head waves is investigated for two loading conditions using a Fully Nonlinear Potential Flow (FNPF) panel method. The main focus is understanding the ship responses in a broad range of operational conditions. Comprehensive analyses of the motions and their correlation with the wave making resistance including their harmonics in waves are presented and compared against experimental data. The predicted motions compare well with experimental data but the resistance prediction is not quite as good. The natural frequencies for heave and pitch are estimated from a set of free decay motion simulations in calm water to provide a better insight into the ship behavior near resonance conditions in waves. Interestingly, in addition to the well known peak in the added wave resistance coefficient around wave lengths close to one ship length, a secondary peak is detected in the vicinity of wave lengths with half the ship length.