Experimental and Numerical Investigation of Seakeeping Performance for Sea-River Ships With Different Hull Fullness

Commercial vessels under 5000 dwt, specifically sea-river vessels, constitute a substantial part of the world’s merchant fleet. These vessels are as a rule running between sea, estuary and river ports.Mostly these vessels are restricted in operation by areas, seasons, distance from port of refuge, wind and wave conditions. In this connection the operational safety of such vessels, which are mainly engaged in carriage of oil products, is a critical issue.This paper addresses integrated studies on seakeeping of sea-river vessels starting from the early design stage with preliminary CFD estimates and model experiments in wave basin up to the operational sea trials. The wave conditions for analytical and experimental studies are chosen to be as close as possible to the specific ship profile and expected area of operation.Some conclusions regarding the effect of block coefficient on seakeeping performance of sea-river vessels are made, estimations and experimental data are compared for a ship with extremely large block coefficient and wider operation area (beyond coastal waters), as well as seakeeping performance data recorded at sea during operational voyage of the vessel on the Black sea and Mediterranean sea are given.Copyright © 2014 by ASME