Time based ship added resistance prediction model for biofouling

The selection of antifouling coating is a significant process that affects fuel consumption of ships and therefore it is important to select the most effective coating system. Since each ship has a particular route and operational characteristics, appropriate antifouling paint should be selected based on the ship's operating profiles to get the maximum efficiency from the coating. The paper presents a time-based biofouling prediction model that uses ship route, ship speed, time at sea, time in port and data from paint performance tests. The model basically predicts the increase in roughness due to biofouling. The model converts the roughness into frictional resistance coefficients, which are stored in a database for a range of ships from 10m to 300m. The developed model was used to predict added resistance of a real ship which is coated with an antifouling paint. The predicted added resistance values were presented for 1-year operation time.