Description:
Most of the ship owners and designers want to make the ships as fuel-efficient and environment-friendly as possible. A good prediction of ship resistance is very helpful to achieve this goal. This research focuses on providing an easy-to-use method which can accurately predict ship resistance in extremely shallow water. Methods of CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) techniques and experiments are applied to build a database. The CFD simulations can give more physical details of the flow and are much cheaper than experiments. A small group of model tests are performed to validate the CFD simulations. During the research, the physics of the flow around the ship in shallow water will be understood deeply which can offer explanations of ship behaviours in shallow water. Finally, a database consists of the results of each resistance component in different water depth and with different ship parameters will be built. A regressing method will be applied to form expressions for each resistance component, and afterwards, an improved prediction of ship resistance which is suitable in extremely shallow water will be established.
Researchers:
Qingsong Zeng (PhD candidate)
Robert Hekkenberg (Supervisor)
Cornel Thill (Supervisor)
J.J. (Hans) Hopman (Promotor)