Estimation of hydrodynamic forces and motion of ships with steady forward speed

Abstract

The growing number of large ships demands predicting their optimum performance with respect to travel time, fuel efficiency and the safety of cargo and personnel in specified shipping routes. This can be achieved using efficient and easy to use numerical tools capable of predicting hydrodynamic loads on floating vessels with steady forward speed and solving their motion response in various wave conditions. A three-dimensional potential theory based code using the Green function method is developed with consideration of forward speed effects. The generalized coordinate system is used to allow motion response calculations with respect to any desired body coordinate system and a common quadrilateral meshing format. The formulation and calculation of added mass and damping coefficients at zero and infinite frequency in forward speed case has been also provided. A number of structures including simple geometries and full ship hull forms have been analyzed and validated against published theoretical, numerical and experimental results. The comparison results are found to be in excellent agreement. The theoretical formulation, numerical implementation and result comparisons are presented here.