A Numerical Study on the Resistance Prediction of a Medium Speed Craft

Abstract

Abstract. This paper aims to study the resistance performance of a medium speed ship, the steadystate Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) simulations are performed by utilizing a commercial CFD software package named Fluent. With the increasing of the ship's speed, the navigation attitude changes significantly as well, in order to achieve precise prediction results, the sinkage and trim motion should be taken into consideration. The author adopted a simple but effective method called "static equilibrium method" to determine the sinkage and trim motion and adjust the navigation attitude. Compared to the result from the towing tank experiment, the predicted result shows a good agreement, it indicates that this method can be a reliable method to predict the resistance performance of this kind of ships and can be used in the process of designing ships.