Penalty of hull and propeller fouling on ship self-propulsion performance

Recently, there has been an increasing interest in predicting the effect of biofouling on ship resistance using Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD). For a better understanding of the impact of biofouling on the fuel consumption and green-house gas emissions of ships, studying the effect of biofouling on ship self-propulsion characteristics is required. In this study, an Unsteady Reynolds Averaged Navier–Stokes (URANS) based full-scale ship self-propulsion model was developed to predict the effect of biofouling on the self-propulsion characteristics of the full-scale KRISO container ship (KCS). A roughness function model was employed in the wall-function of the CFD model to represent the barnacles on the hull, rudder and propeller surfaces. A proportional-integral (PI) controller was embedded in the simulation model to find the self-propulsion point. Simulations were conducted in various configurations of the hull and/or propeller fouling. Finally, the effect of biofouling on the self-propulsion characteristics have been investigated.