1. Introduction
A bulbous bow is a long-established solution for reducing the added resistance acting on ships by using the bulbous bow’s wave-generating effect. The study of reducing added waves’ resistance as well as reducing the total resistance of ships so as to reduce fuel consumption is still an important topic in the marine transportation field. For ships with huge hulls and blunt bows, the resistance from added waves acting on the hull accounts for a large percentage of the total resistance in conditions of both calm water and waves. Therefore, many researchers around the world have given importance to the study of reducing added waves’ resistance acting on ships’ hulls.
In recent years, a large number of published papers have examined the topics of reduced added waves’ resistance on ships, optimal hydrodynamic hull shapes, the effects of bow and stern shapes on added waves’ resistance, and the optimal hull shape in wave conditions, etc. We offer a comprehensive literature review below.
There are many published papers on applying a commercial Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) code to investigate ship hydrodynamic performance. CFD has been a useful and popular tool for solving problems of the hydrodynamic performance of ships with high accuracy. By applying CFD, various hull forms with small resistances have been proposed [
1,
2,
3,
4,
5,
6,
7,
8,
9,
10,
11,
12,
13,
14,
15,
16].
The Non Ballast Water Ship (NBS) model has been known since 2010, when it was developed at the laboratory of Prof. Ikeda at Osaka Prefecture University (OPU). Tatsumi et al. (2010) presented a study on the development of a new energy-saving NBS tanker with multiple podded propulsors. The ship was developed with a round and streamlined hull to drastically reduce viscous resistance and multiple podded propulsors moving up and down to keep the propellers deep enough in the water. Using an experimental model in the towing tank at OPU for several hull forms, their results confirmed that the resistance acting on the new ship was reduced by up to 44.8% of the total resistance with ballast, and up to 17.5% at full load [
17]. The original hull form with a blunt bow shape was proposed at first. The experimental model test demonstrated that, at a low Froude number of less than 0.16, the resistance acting on the original ship was significantly higher because of the possibly increase in wave resistance [
18,
19].
Tomita et al. (2011) and Tasumi et al. (2011) presented a study on developing a new bulbous bow for the original NBS model with reduced added resistance at the hull, achieved using an experimental model in a towing tank. The ships with the new bow shape could reduce the total resistance in calm water by up to 11%. Additionally, the model could reduce the added waves’ resistance in moderated short waves by up to 25%; the waves’ height (H
w) was 0.02 m and the waves’ length per ship length (λ/L
pp) was less than 0.6 for the 2 m long model tested in the towing tank [
18,
19]. In other research on the development of a new bow form for the NBS performed at Ikeda’s laboratory at the OPU, a commercial CFD code was applied to optimize the bow shape. The ship resistance, both in calm water and in wave conditions, was the object of the optimization process for designed parameters such as the volume of the bow shape, the height of the volume at the center of the bow, the angle of the bow’s bottom, and the length of the bow. Analysis of the results showed that the optimal bulbous bow shape could reduce the total resistance of the hull form by up to 15% in calm water and by up to 18% in regular head wave conditions (H
w = 0.02 m; λ/L
pp < 0.6) [
2,
3,
4,
20,
21,
22].
Luo et al. (2016) presented a study on the optimal design of the lines of a bulbous bow shape using applied parametric modeling and CFD computation. In the study, the lines of the ship’s bow were optimized by using an optimal platform at the hull shape design stage using automatic progress. Additionally, the Rankine source panel method was applied to evaluate the added waves’ resistance acting on the hull of a Ro-Ro ship. The results showed that added wave resistance was clearly reduced and the wave bow profile became gentle in the ship design with optimized lines of the bulbous bow [
23]. Others studies also used the Rankine source panel method; for example, Lu et al. (2016) presented a study of an innovative method for the optimization of the hydrodynamic performance of a bulbous bow while considering different conditions [
24]. Zhang et al. (2017) presented research on the optimal bulbous bow shape based on the newly improved PSO algorithm. In the study, the total resistance of the ship in calm water was defined as the objective function, and the overset generated mesh method was applied to meshing. The volume of fluid method, together with the Reynolds Averaged Navier–Stokes (RANS) equation, was applied to evaluate the resistance acting on the hull [
25].
Lee et al. (2019) presented research on the effects of bow form on ship resistance in both calm water and wave conditions for the 66,000 DWT bulker carrier. In the study, a computational tool was used to clearly find the cause of reduced resistance acting on the ship hull in both calm water and wave conditions for the sharp bow shape in comparison to the blunt bow shape of the 66,000 DWT bulker carriers. The unsteady flow with two phases method, the RANS equations, and the turbulent viscous k-ε model were applied to a realizable model. The results showed good agreement between the CFD and experimental towing tank results. The pressure viscous resistance of the ship in calm water and wave conditions with the sharp bow shape could be reduced by up to 8.9% and 12.7%, respectively, in formed head waves compared with those of the hull with a blunt bow shape [
26].
Other published papers reported on the hydrodynamics and resistant hull forms of different hulls of ships studied using experimental measurements at towing tanks and CFD computation. Begovic et al. (2014) presented a result of a model towing tank test on seakeeping assessment of a ship with a warped planning hull series [
27]. Casalone et al. (2020) presented a study on unsteady RANS computational fluid dynamic simulations of sailboats and compared their results with the resistance results of the full scale experiment [
12]. Feng et al. (2020) presented a study on the numerical computation of resistance acting on the hull of a KCS ship at different depth conditions for a scale computed model and the full scale model [
13]. Ngo (2017) presented a study on a newly developed reduced concept for river ships in calm water [
28]. Kahramanoğlu et al. (2020) presented a study on a numerical simulation used to predict the component vertical responses of planning ships under wave conditions [
14]. Sun et al. (2020) studied numerical computation used to investigate ship resistance and ship motion stability for a high-speed planning trimaran [
15]. Other similar studies include [
11,
16,
29].
In this study, a commercial CFD tools named ANSYS-Fluent v.15.0 has been applied to investigate the effect of a bulbous bow shape on ship resistance, both in calm water and in regular head waves conditions. The original hull form of the NBS with a blunt bow form, which was developed by Prof. Ikeda at Osaka Prefecture University, was used as a reference ship model. By using the CFD, the hydrodynamic performance and resistance acting on the hulls with and without a bulbous bow shape were simulated to determine the effect of the bulbous bow shape. From the obtained results, a new hull shape with a bulbous bow and reduced added resistance has been clearly identified in this study.