Research on Influence of Trim on a Container Ship's Resistance performance

Faced with the double pressure of rising oil price and limitation of greenhouse gas emissions, many ship owners began to seek measures to minimize ship's resistance under specific conditions. Trim optimization has gained more and more attention in recent years for its flexibility and effectiveness in energy saving and emission reduction. The purpose of this paper is to perform trim optimization on a container ship. First, commercial CFD code of the ANSYS FLUENT was applied to calculate the target ship's total resistance. Then, in order to validate the effectiveness of CFD method, experimental result of ship model test was referred and it indicated that the numerical method was a reliable tool in prediction of the container ship's hydrodynamic performance. Finally, resistance corresponding to various trim conditions and speeds of three typical drafts were investigated, and it showed that trim did have impact on resistance. Based on the attained result, optimum trim value for actual navigation was suggested. (paper)