A parametric study on seakeeping assessment of fast ships in conceptual design stage

The paper presents an approach to investigate the effects of some parameters on seakeeping assessment of fast ships in conceptual design stage. Hull form parameters have been classified into two groups: main dimensions (L, B and T) and secondary form parameters (LCB and C_P). To demonstrate the approach a fast ship is redesigned as parent hull and alternative hull forms are generated by changing these parameters systematically. Some hull forms are selected related the geometric limits and seakeeping analyzes are here investigated and discussed. The obtained results are satisfactory for seakeeping predictions during the conceptual design stage.     

A parametric study of wave loads on trimaran ships traveling in waves

In this paper, we present a spectral analysis based on wave loads to select suitable side-hull arrangements for a trimaran ship traveling in waves. Neglecting the steady flow effect, the three-dimensional source-distribution method, using a pulsating source potential incorporating the panel method, is adopted to solve the corresponding hydrodynamic coefficients. The significant values for wave loads, including shear forces, bending moments, and torsion moments at different locations on the main hull and connected deck with respect to different staggers and clearances, are derived by the spectral analysis. Several ship speeds and wave headings are also considered for comparison. This study offers more information for selecting the side-hull arrangement from the viewpoint of wave loads on trimaran ships, which may be regarded as helpful references for seakeeping design of these types of ships.     

Predicting the effect of biofouling on ship resistance using CFD

This paper proposes a Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) based unsteady RANS model which enables the prediction of the effect of marine coatings and biofouling on ship resistance and presents CFD simulations of the roughness effects on the resistance and effective power of the full-scale 3D KRISO Container Ship (KCS) hull.Initially, a roughness function model representing a typical coating and different fouling conditions was developed by using the roughness functions given in the literature. This model then was employed in the wall-function of the CFD software and the effects of a typical as applied coating and different fouling conditions on the frictional resistance of flat plates representing the KCS were predicted for a design speed of 24 knots and a slow steaming speed of 19 knots using the proposed CFD model. The roughness effects of such conditions on the resistance components and effective power of the full-scale 3D KCS model were then predicted at the same speeds. The resulting frictional resistance values of the present study were then compared with each other and with results obtained using the similarity law analysis. The increase in the effective power of the full-scale KCS hull was predicted to be 18.1% for a deteriorated coating or light slime whereas that due to heavy slime was predicted to be 38% at a ship speed of 24 knots. In addition, it was observed that the wave resistance and wave systems are significantly affected by the hull roughness and hence viscosity.     

Assessment of manoeuvring performance of large tankers in restricted waterways: a real-time simulation approach

During the past 30 years there has been a steady growth in the size and number of ships that use the Strait of Istanbul (Bosporus) which is one of the most hazardous, crowded, difficult and potentially dangerous waterways in the world. There have been over 200 accidents over the past decade resulting in loss of life and serious damage to the environment. This paper presents the results of a real-time ship manoeuvring simulation study investigating the manoeuvring performance of large tankers in the Bosporus. The study was conducted with a ship manoeuvring simulator which is capable of subjecting a given hull form to any combination of environmental conditions, i.e. wind, current and wave drift forces. The results indicate that when realistic environmental conditions are taken into account the size of ships which can navigate safely in compliance with the traffic separation lanes is limited.     

Seasickness prediction in passenger ships at the design stage

Seakeeping qualities are one of the most important aspects for passenger ships, since a collateral effect of seakeeping, the seasickness, can avoid the use of ships and ferries among passengers who can choose a different way of transport. Therefore, it is important for ship designers and ship owners to predict and evaluate the seasickness effects at the design stage.In this paper, a review of the seasickness causes and effects is made, and a mathematical model that includes several human factors is proposed. This model is applicable especially in big passenger ships where different kind of spaces or activities for the passengers can be found inside the ship.The way to present the large amount of information obtained in seakeeping calculations is important, and it is useful to detect the most conflictive parts of the ship's general arrangement. Calculations for an example ferry are presented.     

艏艉线型优化对船舶阻力性能的影响

为提高母型船阻力性能,以船体阻力性能为优化对象,基于改造母型船法,研究船舶球鼻艏以及船尾线型的改变对船舶阻力性能的影响.采用高度集成化的Tribon系统、可视化绘图软件Auto CAD及CFD(Computational Fluid Dynamics)通用前处理软件ICEM联合建模的方法来建立船体模型.通过模拟计算结果与实验值的对比分析,验证CFD技术在船舶阻力性能预报中的合理性和有效性.通过对比3种不同球鼻艏时的船体阻力得知:从阻力性能方面考虑,对于低速丰满型船舶选用普通型球鼻艏以及中高速船舶采用上翘型球鼻艏均可以获取较好地减阻效果.同时比较不同航速下尾部线型对船体总阻力的影响表明,选优后的方形尾在相同的航速下阻力低、消耗的功率小、形状效应小、黏压阻力和摩擦阻力也相对较小.     

Numerical study on scale effect of form factor

The scale effect of form factor is investigated via a numerical approach in this paper, where the turbulent ship flow is computed by solving the steady and incompressible Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes and continuity equations. A wall function approach is employed to bridge the near-wall and outer turbulent flow region. The numerical scheme based on a finite-volume formulation is applied to discretize the coupled governing equation. For the sake of numerical stability, accuracy and economy, an identical grid is employed to compute ship flow at different Reynolds number, where the grid is optimized for the medium Reynolds number of the investigated range. Four surface ships and two sub-bodies with notably different geometrical characteristics are chosen as the investigated cases, where double-model flow without appendages is computed. The calculated total resistance coefficient shows a decreasing tendency against Reynolds number among all studied hulls. Similar to the calculated total resistance coefficient, the calculated friction resistance coefficient decreases with the Reynolds number and varies relatively little for a given Reynolds number among different hulls. The viscous pressure resistance coefficient is less insensitive to the Reynolds number but apparently depends on hull form. Compared with the form factor calculation based on empirical friction lines, the flat-plate friction prediction based on CFD approach clearly gives smaller Re-dependent form factor, which should more realistically reflect the scale effect of form factor. The form factor exhibits a near linear and increasing dependence on Reynolds number. The numerical results show that the dependence of r_P on Reynolds number mainly governs the scale effect of form factor.     

3-D geometric modeler for rapid ship safety assessment

CAD systems are used broadly in the shipbuilding industry. CAD systems for naval architecture are a useful tool for hull form, internal arrangement and the structural design of ships. These systems require high precision and expertise for efficient use. Therefore, these systems are not appropriate in supporting emergency responses, which require rapid modeling even if it generates some errors.This paper describes a geometric modeler for rapid ship safety assessment. The modeler is developed based on the 3-D geometric modeling kernel ACIS. The definition of hull form, internal arrangement and major longitudinal structural members is a fundamental function of the modeler. The developed modeler is interfaced with other applications used for ship safety assessment such as hydrostatic calculation, ship motion analysis in wave condition, longitudinal strength analysis and so on. In addition, it can generate a new ship model by making variations in a previously defined ship model.     

Seakeeping assessment of fishing vessels in conceptual design stage

The main idea of this paper is to identify functional relations between seakeeping characteristics and hull form parameters of Mediterranean fishing vessels. Multiple regression analysis is used for quantitative assessment through a computer software that is based on the SQL Server Database. The seakeeping attributes under investigation are the transfer functions of heave and pitch motions and of absolute vertical acceleration at stern, while the ship parameters influencing motion dynamics have been classified into two groups: displacement (Δ) and main dimensions (L, B, T), coefficients that define the details of the hull form (C_WP, C_VP, LCB, LCF, etc.).Four multiple regression models having different parameter combinations are here investigated and discussed, giving way to the so-called ‘Simple Model’, ‘Intermediate Model’, ‘Enhanced 1 Model’ and ‘Enhanced 2 Model’. The obtained results are more than satisfactory for seakeeping predictions during the conceptual design stage.     

Seakeeping standard series for oblique seas (a synopsis)

The seakeeping performance in oblique seas for a series of 72 cruiser-stern hull forms has been evaluated analytically and is presented in a systematic way. The hull form series have been created by Loukakis and Chryssostomidis (1975) by extending the principal characteristics of the Series 60 to cover usual shipbuilding practice. In that work, however, only the seakeeping performance in head seas was presented. Recently, the seakeeping performance of the Extended Series 60 was re-evaluated for both head seas and oblique seas. The complete results are presented in tabular and graphical form as a function of the principal characteristics of the ship, the Froude number (including Fn=0, missing in the original series), the non-dimensional modal wave period and the heading angle in a separate NTUA report (Grigoropoulos et al., 1994). In the present paper, the results for one case are given in tabular form accompanied by graphical representation. They include: heave, pitch, bending moment amidships, added resistance, absolute vertical acceleration and relative vertical motion at the bow and the stern regions and relative vertical velocity at stations 2 and 4 where slamming is likely to occur.     

An inverse hull design approach in minimizing the ship wave

The Levenberg–Marquardt Method (LMM) and a panel code for solving the wave-making problem are utilized in an inverse hull design problem for minimizing the wave of ships. A typical catamaran is selected as the example ship for the present study. The hull form of the catamaran is described by the B-spline surface method so that the shape of the hull can be completely specified using only a small number of parameters (i.e. control points). The technique of parameter estimation for the inverse design problem is thus chosen. The LMM of parameter estimation, which is the combination of steepest descent and Newton’s methods, has been proven to be a powerful tool for the inverse shape design problem. For this reason it is adopted in the present study.In the present studies, the inverse hull design method can not only be applied to estimate the hull form based on the known wave data of the target ship but can also be applied to estimate the unknown hull form based on the reduced wave height. The optimal hull forms of minimizing wave for a typical catamaran in deep water at service speed and at the critical speed of shallow water are estimated, respectively. Moreover, a new hull form with the combining feature of the optimal hull forms for deep water and shallow water is performing well under both conditions. The numerical simulation indicates that the hull form designed by inverse hull design method can reduce the ship wave significantly in comparison with the original hull form.     

Seakeeping of two ships in close proximity

Underway replenishment is an essential component of long-term naval operations. During underway replenishment, two ships travel in close proximity at moderate forward speed. This paper examines the hydrodynamic interactions that can influence seakeeping during such operations. Presented numerical predictions include the influence of interaction effects on hydrodynamic forces for two ships in waves. A scarcity of validation material for numerical predictions prompted new towing tank experiments for two ships in waves. The experiments used semi-captive models, and the numerical code was modified to include restraining forces for specified modes. The numerical predictions and experiments show that the presence of a larger ship can significantly influence the motions of a smaller ship in close proximity.     

Effect of criteria on seakeeping performance assessment

The overall performance of ships depends on the seakeeping performance in specified sea areas where the vessel is designed to operate. The seakeeping performance procedure is based upon the probability of exceeding specified ship motions in a sea environment particular to the vessel's mission. Given the operational area of the vessel, the percentage of time the vessel operates in a particular sea state can be determined from an oceanographic database through application of the response amplitude operators. The predicted motions are compared to the motion limiting criteria to obtain the operability indices. However, the operability indices are strongly affected by the chosen limiting criteria. This is particularly the case for passenger vessels where many conflicting criteria are used to assess the effect of motions and accelerations on comfort and well-being of passengers. This paper investigates the effect of seakeeping criteria on seakeeping performance assessment for passenger vessels. Conventional seakeeping performance measures are evaluated for various levels of vertical accelerations defined by the ISO 2631 standard. It is shown that the estimated seakeeping performance of a passenger vessel greatly depends on the level of limiting value selected as the seakeeping criteria.     

适用于浅海油田的高速交通艇设计

研究设计了一艘适用于浅海油田的高速交通艇，该艇采用深V线型和在侧斜螺旋浆，设有主动式减摇鳍。实船航行表明该艇具有优良的耐波性。     

An optimization approach for fairing of ship hull forms

This paper presents a numerical fairing procedure to be used at the preliminary design stage to create high-quality ship hull form geometry. The procedure is based on a variational optimization approach in which a fairness measure related to the surface curvature is the objective function to be minimized subject to a set of geometric constraints to ensure that the final form has the required geometric characteristics. The optimization variables are selected as the control points of a B-spline surface representing the initial hull form. A nonlinear direct search technique is employed to solve the problem. The methodology is applied for typical ship forms to indicate that, provided that the designer can specify appropriate design objectives and geometric constraints, the methodology can produce alternative hull forms with significantly improved fairing characteristics. The choice of the fairness objective function is shown to have a crucial effect on the quality of the hull surface. Highly nonlinear exact fairness functionals yield surfaces of high quality at the expense of high-computerized effort.     

Hydrodynamic shape optimization by high fidelity CFD solver and Gaussian process based response surface method

A computational framework for hydrodynamic shape optimization of complex ship hull form is proposed and applied to improve the calm water performance of the KRISO Container Ship (KCS). The framework relies on three key features: a novel shape morphing method based on a combination of subdivision surfaces and free form deformations, a robust three dimensional viscous computational fluid dynamic solver based on the openFOAM open-source libraries and a Gaussian process-response surface method (GP-RSM) based on ordinary Kriging model which has been created to speed-up the evaluation of the quantity of interest (QoI) of the design process.The accuracy of the hydrodynamic solver is proven by comparing the obtained results against available experimental measurements. A preliminary sensitivity analysis on the mesh size has been carried out aiming at reducing the computational burden required by the CFD predictions. Three GP-RSMs have been trained relying on increasing number of hull designs. Each surrogate model has been cross-validated by both leave-one-out and k-fold techniques. The behaviours of these multi-dimensional surfaces have been analyzed in details by sampling the investigated design space with 10⁷ points according to a Full-Factorial algorithm, highlighting the regions of maximum deviation with respect to the resistance of the reference hull. The three optimum designs provided by the corresponding GP-RSM models have been verified by using high-fidelity CFD simulations with a refined mesh configuration. Calm water resistance, wave patterns and pressure distributions over the selected hull surfaces have been discussed in the light of the generated shape variations.     

Fatigue damage of ship hulls due to local ice-induced stresses

Fatigue damage in a ship hull could lead to leakage of ballast or cargo, water intrusion, degradation of hull strength, or even worse, i.e. catastrophic structural failure. For ships navigating in ice-covered waters, fatigue damage due to ice actions can be of importance. The present paper proposes a systematic procedure for fatigue damage assessment in relation to ships navigating in ice-covered waters. Closed form expressions for the fatigue damage based on the Palmgren–Miner’s rule are derived for several different statistical models of the stress amplitudes, i.e. the exponential, the Weibull’s, and the three-parameter exponential distributions. Additional expressions are also provided when stress concentration factor and/or a lower threshold of the stress amplitude are taken into account. The proposed procedure for fatigue damage assessment reflects the variation in ice conditions, vessel’s speed, and operational modes. Some practical concerns related to application of the proposed procedure are also discussed. A particular example of fatigue damage calculation is presented, where data obtained from full scale measurement performed on board of the vessel KV Svalbard in the winter 2007 are utilized.     

Development of hybrid URANS-LES methods for flow simulation in the ship stern area

The paper presents the results of the application of a new hybrid URANS-LES method for the investigations of the ship wake behind the tanker KVLCC2. The switching between URANS and LES models is based on the ratio between the turbulence scale and the cell size of the mesh. Ship resistance, fields of the axial velocity and turbulent kinetic energy in the propeller plane are calculated and compared with measurements. Much attention is paid to the analysis of the unsteady velocities, their PDF distributions and spectra. Numerical analysis shows that the instantaneous velocities deviate substantially from their mean values which are usually used as the estimated velocities in modern engineering methodologies. The thrust variation in the unsteady wake is more than twice as large as that in the time averaged (frozen) wake. The results of the present study point out that the unsteadiness in the wake behind full ships can be very large and should be taken into account when propulsion and unsteady loadings are determined.     

Nonlinear meta-models for conceptual seakeeping design of fishing vessels

The scope of this paper is to develop the nonlinear meta-models for seakeeping behaviour, considering the fishing vessels. These models are intended to be inserted either in a multiattribute design selection process or in a comprehensive multiobjective optimization procedure. For this purpose, seakeeping data of fishing vessels in regular head waves are used to develop meta-models of transfer functions of heave, pitch and vertical acceleration by nonlinear analysis. A home-made software considers two databases; the first is composed by the ship dimensions and coefficients of fishing vessels, and the second is their ship motion data obtained by employing a strip-theory calculation. The meta-models are proposed to predict the vertical motion characteristics for given ranges of speed and wave length during the concept design stage. The independent variables are hull size (Δ), main dimensions (L, B, T), and some hydrostatic parameters (C_WP, C_VP, LCB, LCF, etc.). The results estimated by the software show good correspondences with the ones achieved by direct computations. The study provides additional insight on the influence of hull form parameters on seakeeping performance of small vessels having form properties and parametric range corresponding to the investigated vessels.     

Strip theories applied to the vertical motions of high speed crafts

The motions of a high speed craft are highly influenced by speed and dynamic forces that begin to be important for high Froude numbers. Classical ship motions theories and some seakeeping programs do not include the effect of these dynamic forces that mainly affect to the damping of vertical motions, and have to be corrected to model high speed crafts. In any other way, the use of these theories or programs would be unrealistic. In this paper, some theories that can be used to predict the seakeeping behaviour of high speed crafts, considering dynamic forces, are studied and validated against seakeeping tests of some fast monohulls models. Tests and results focus on vertical motions in head seas, which are the most severe for these fast crafts. Experimental results of vertical motions are compared with numerical calculations and conclusions about the range of application of the presented theories are obtained.