Full Scale Performance Prediction for Energy Efficient Ship Design

In the final project month, the focus was on the finalization of the main project deliverables, including the computer program PROPSCALE FrameWork, implementing the scaling procedures developed in the project, guidelines and pre-processing macros for CFD simulations, and technical reports. The status of these deliverables have been presented at the final Project Meeting and Workshop held in Ålesund on June 27-28, 2016. It has been agreed that the deliverables will be subject to further revisions and elaborations after the completion of the project.

Energy efficiency and pollution prevention are seen as the two most important driving forces in the future innovative ship designs. As far as the ship designer is concerned, the above considerations imply knowledge investment into the development of new e nergy efficient designs of vessels and propulsion systems. Accurate analysis of full scale characteristics of vessels equipped with novel propulsion systems calls for the development of new, advanced performance prediction methods, as well as for the revi sion of established scaling procedures used in engineering calculations. In order to achieve the objectives of the present project, the following research tasks will be solved: - State-of-the art approaches to the performance prediction of vessels will be reviewed and evaluated, concerning with both the scaling procedures that make use of model test results and CFD methods that apply directly to the analysis of full scale conditions. - CFD methods for the analysis of ship-propulsor interaction will be developed and subjected to verification and validation studies on a number of benchmark cases. - Target cases of innovative vessel and propulsor designs will be chosen and studied experimentally in model scale and numerically, under different scale facto rs, using the developed CFD methods. - Based on the results of the aforementioned studies with target cases, mathematical models will be built for ship resistance, open water characteristics of propulsors and hull-propulsor interaction coefficients. Thes e models will be made available as computer codes for early-stage design evaluation and optimization. - Recommendations and guidelines will be given with respect to the engineering performance prediction procedures using the experimental data from model tests. - Best practice manual on CFD methods for the engineering calculations of propulsive characteristics of vessels will be elaborated.