Resistance and wave characterizations of inland vessels in the fully-confined waterway

The resistance and ship-generated waves of two inland vessels in the fully-confined waterway are investigated based on numerical simulations. The simulation results are validated using towing tank experiments. The influences of the channel dimension, water depth, ship draught and velocity are studied. Specially, the ship resistance is characterized as a function of the blockage ratio and the theory of the linear ship wakes is corrected using the ship draught. These results are expected to predict the ship hydrodynamics in the restricted waterway and reveal the acting mechanism of the confinement effect on a certain level.