Numerical Investigating the Effect of Water Depth on Ship Resistance Using RANS CFD Method

On inland waterways the ship resistance and propulsive characteristics are strictly related to the depth of the waterway, thus it is important to have an understanding of the influence of water depth on ship hydrodynamic characteristics. Therefore, accurate predictions of hydrodynamic forces in restricted waterways are required and important. The aim of this paper is investigating the capability of the commercial unsteady Reynolds–Averaged Navier–Stokes (RANS) solver to predict the influence of water depth on ship resistance. The volume of fluid method (VOF) is applied to simulate the free surface flow around the ship. The hull resistance in shallow and deep water is compared. The obtained numerical results are validated against related experimental studies available in the literature.