Validation of short-term prediction of added resistance in head seas considering wave steepness nonlinearity with probability density function method

Abstract

The added resistance in waves, which is an important component in the estimation of actual sea performance of ships, has been evaluated as the average value by short-term prediction methods. In this paper, a novel probabilistic method to account for non-linearities of added resistance with respect to wave height in short-term sea conditions is proposed using the joint occurrence probability distribution of wave height and period and non-linear added resistance response in the frequency region. It is a method of averaging the combination of crest and trough that ships encounter in irregular waves, which is considered as one wave of the regular waves, and the resulting added resistance is combined stochastically. The non-linearity with respect to wave height is empirically expressed as a “correction coefficient” obtained from the comparison of CFD data and potential-based linear calculation results in regular waves. The results of the proposed method have a reasonable agreement in the acceptable range of accuracy with results of RANSE based CFD numerical simulations in long crested irregular waves and the experimental model tests. As a result, the proposed method is applicable for obtaining added resistance in irregular head waves having the non-linearity with respect to wave height with a scope of further improvement in the method.