Experimental and Numerical Investigations of Ship Parametric Rolling in Regular Head Waves

Parametric rolling is one of five types of the ship stability failure modes as proposed by IMO. The periodic change of the metacentric height is often considered as the internal cause of this phenomenon. Parametric rolling is a complex nonlinear hydrodynamic problem, often accompanied by large amplitude vertical motions of ships. In recent years, the Reynolds-averaged Navier–Stokes (RANS) equation simulations for viscous flows have made great progress in the field of ship seakeeping. In this paper, the parametric rolling for the C11 containership in regular waves is studied both experimentally and numerically. In the experiments, parametric rolling amplitudes at different drafts, forward speeds and wave steepnesses are analyzed. The differences in the steady amplitudes of parametric rolling are observed for two drafts. The effect of the incident wave steepness (or wave amplitude) is also studied, and this supports previous results obtained on limits of the stability for parametric rolling. In numerical simulations, the ship motions of parametric rolling are analyzed by use of the potential-flow and viscous-flow methods. In the viscous-flow method, the Reynolds-averaged Navier–Stokes equations are solved using the overset grid method. The numerical accuracies of the two methods at different wave steepnesses are also discussed.