Numerical study on the hydrodynamic drag force of a container ship model

In recent years, importance has been recognized increasingly for the reduction of fuel consumption of ships in a seaway to reduce green-house gas emissions from shipping. From a ship design viewpoint, it is of crucial importance to establish reliable prediction methods for ship’s resistance and propulsive power. The required power for the propulsion unit depends on the ship resistance and speed. There are three solutions for the prediction of ship resistance as follow analytical methods, model tests in tanks and Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD). The rapid developments in computers and computational methods increased the opportunities of the CFD simulation to be used in the ship design process. The present paper aims at simulating ship resistance using CFD simulations method which is conducted using ANSYS-CFX software package. As a case study, Container ship scale model is investigated. The results show the ship resistance which calculated at various ship speeds and Froude number. Predicted results for resistance components at various Froude numbers were compared against Resistance results computed by using Holtop method. It is shown that the simulation results agree fairly well with the results computed from Holtrop method, and that ANSYS-CFX code can predict ship resistance.