Seakeeping analysis of a tanker with hard sail-based wind propulsion system in various seaways

Abstract

A hard sail is a type of wind-assisted ship propulsion (WASP) technology that incorporates wind energy to propel the ship with the help of sails and can significantly reduce the ship's energy consumption. This study focuses on the seakeeping analysis of a hard sail-assisted KVLCC2 ship in different wave conditions. A numerical simulation of the aerodynamic performance of a sail system consisting of two sails was done on ANSYS Fluent and compared with corresponding experimental data. The motion response and added resistance of a KVLCC2 hull in regular waves were numerically predicted in STAR CCM + software and compared with corresponding seakeeping experimental test data. The numerical results obtained for the tanker in regular waves show reasonable accuracy in predicting the hydrodynamic responses of the ship as compared to experimental data. A static analysis was conducted in MAXSURF software to verify the stability of the full-scale ship after the installation of the hard sails. Finally, computational analysis was carried out for the sail-installed KVLCC2 hull to evaluate its hydrodynamic performance for different wave conditions like the regular and irregular head sea as well as beam sea conditions along with expected operational and severe wind speeds corresponding to the model scale hull. The results show that the added resistance and motion amplitudes for the sail-assisted KVLCC2 ship do not change significantly in both operational and severe head sea conditions. However, in the case of a beam sea, there is a significant increase in both added resistance and motion amplitudes.