There has been a lot of interest in trim optimisation to reduce fuel consumption and emissions of ships. Many existing ships are designed for a single operational condition with the aim of producing low resistance at their design speed and draft with an even keel. Given that a ship will often sail outside this condition over its operational life and moreover some vessels such as LNG carriers return in ballast condition in one leg, the effect of trim on ships resistance will be significant. Ship trim optimization analysis has traditionally been done through towing tank testing. Computational techniques have become increasingly popular for design and optimization applications in all engineering disciplines. Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD), is the fastest developing area in marine fluid dynamics as an alternative to model tests. High fidelity CFD methods are capable of modelling breaking waves which is especially crucial for trim optimisation studies where the bulbous bow partially emerges or the transom stern partially immerses. This paper presents a trim optimization study on the Kriso Container Ship (KCS) using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) in conjunction with towing tank tests. A series of resistance tests for various trim angles and speeds were conducted at 1:75 scale at design draft. CFD computations were carried out for the same conditions with the hull both fixed and free to sink and trim. Dynamic sinkage and trim add to the computational cost and thus slow the optimisation process. The results obtained from CFD simulations were in good agreement with the experiments. After validating the applicability of the computational model, the same mesh, boundary conditions and solution techniques were used to obtain resistance values for different trim conditions at different Froude numbers. Both the fixed and free trim/sinkage models could predict the trend of resistance with variation of trim angles; however the fixed model failed to measure the absolute values as accurately as the free model. It was concluded that a fixed CFD model, although computationally faster and cheaper, can find the optimum trim angle but cannot predict the amount of savings with very high accuracy. Results concerning the performance of the vessel at different speeds and trim angles were analysed and optimum trim is suggested.
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