Indian Journal of GeoMarine Sciences

Vol. 43(11), November 2014, pp._____

CFD Analysis for a Ballast Free Ship Design

Avinash Godey1*, S.C.Misra1and O.P.Sha2
1

Indian Maritime University (Visakhapatnam Campus), Gandhigram, Visakhapatnam 530 015

2
Dept. of Ocean Engg. & Naval Architecture, IIT Kharagpur, 721302, India.
[Email: avinashgodey@imu.co.in ]
Received 05 March 2014; revised 01 September 2014

Shipping transfers approximately 3 to 5 billion tonnes of ballast water internationally each year. This ballast water
transferred between different ports is a serious environmental problem. There are many marine species like bacteria, small
invertebrates and the eggs, etc., that are carried in ships ballast water which are small enough to pass through a ships
intake at ports and when discharged, lead to severe ecological problems. To overcome this, a concept of ballast free ship
has been developed in which ballast water exchange and treatment is avoided by providing flowthrough longitudinal
pipes in the double bottom instead of conventional ballast tank. During the design of the ballast free ship, different hull
forms have been generated with various hull shapes of the vessel which have been studied with regard to hydrodynamic
behaviour. Finally one hull form has been selected for further study. The present work aims to estimate the penalty on
resistance using CFD techniques using SHIPFLOW software. These results are validated by model experiments for the
conventional and the proposed ballast Free form at loaded and ballast drafts in the Hydrodynamics Laboratory of the
Department of Ocean Engineering and Naval Architecture, IIT Kharagpur.

Introduction
The introduction of marine species like
bacteria, small invertebrates and their eggs, etc., far
beyond their normal geographic ranges through ship
ballast water is becoming increasingly common.
Such introduction may set up circumstances that
allow the population of a particular species to grow
unhindered in the absence of their natural predators.
Many species of bacteria, plants, and animals
carried through ships can survive in a viable form in
the ballast water, even after journeys of several
months duration. Subsequent discharge of ballast
water into the waters of port of call may result in
the establishment of harmful aquatic organisms and
pathogens which may pose threats to indigenous
human, animal and plant life, and the marine
environment.
Shipping moves over 80% of the worlds
commodities and transfers approximately 3 to 5
billion tonnes of ballast water globally each year.
Ballast water is essential to the safe and efficient
operation of modern shipping, providing balance
and stability to unladen ships. However, it may
also pose a serious ecological, economic and health
threat. The development of larger and faster ships
completing their voyages in short time, combined
with rapidly increasing international trade has led to
an increase in transportation of invasive species.
The problem has been compounded due to larger
quantities of ballast transported leading to increased

number of species moved from one place to

another.
Aquatic invasions considered the second
greatest threat to global biodiversity after habitat
loss are virtually irreversible, and increase in
severity over time.
To overcome this, a concept of Ballast Free
Ship has been proposed in which ballast water
exchange and treatment is avoided by providing
flowthrough longitudinal pipes in the double
bottom instead of conventional ballast tank. The
paper aims to find the flow in the pipes of the ship
and find if any stagnation of water is there with in
the pipes through CFD analysis using
SHIPFLOW.
Ballast Water Management Convention
The involuntary transfer of harmful aquatic
organisms and pathogens in a vessels ballast water
has been determined to have caused significant
adverse impact to many of the worlds coastal
regions.
One of the strategies incorporated into the
Ballast Water Management Convention is Ballast
Water Exchange. Ballast water exchange is the
process of exchanging coastal water, which may be
fresh water, salt water or brackish water, or mid
ocean water. During the exchange process,
biologically laden water taken in the last port of call
is flushed out of the ballast tanks with open ocean

GODEY et al.: CFD ANALYSIS FOR A BALLAST FREE SHIP DESIGN

water, typically 200 nautical miles from the nearest

land. According to the ballast water exchange
standard the vessels performing ballast water
exchange must achieve a 95% volumetric exchange
of ballast water. To achieve this target, ballast water
must be pumped out three times the volumetric
capacity of each ballast water tank.
The Ballast Water Exchange Methods for the
replacement of water in a ballast tank are
sequential, flowthrough, dilution or other exchange
methodologies recommended or required by
International Maritime Organization (IMO).
Sequential Method
The sequential method entails completely
emptying ballast tanks of the coastal waters and
refilling with openocean water. Emptying of
certain tanks may lead to significantly reduced
stability, higher vessel structural stresses, high
sloshing pressures and/or reduced forward drafts
which may then increase the probability of bow
slamming. Margins are to be provided for stability
and strength for all seagoing conditions, as
specified in the vessels approved trim and stability
booklet and the loading manual. The loading
conditions for the selected ballast water exchange
method or methods are to be taken from the
approved loading manual or trim and stability
booklet.
Flow-through Method
The flowthrough method involves pumping
replacement ballast water into the bottom of a full
ballast tank, forcing existing ballast water out
through an overflow or other arrangement. Ballast
water equal to approximately three times the tank
capacity must be pumped through the tank to
achieve 95% effectiveness in eliminating aquatic
organisms.
Dilution Method
In the dilution method, replacement ballast
water is filled through the top of the ballast tank and
simultaneously discharged from the bottom at the
same flow rate while maintaining a constant level in
the tank throughout the ballast exchange operation.
As with the flowthough method, ballast equal to
approximately three times the tank capacity must be
pumped through the tank to achieve 95%
effectiveness in eliminating aquatic organisms. The
dilution method has the advantages over the flow
through method with regard to maintaining the
stability and strength and other similar benefits. By
discharging water from the bottom of the ballast
tanks, sediments are more easily removed. This

method avoids the use of air vent pipes and the

removal of manhole covers to discharge water over
the deck.
Ballast Free Ship Concept
A design solution, to overcome the problem of
carrying ballast water, is to change the view i.e.
from adding weight for increasing draft to reducing
buoyancy to achieve the draft needed. Therefore,
the ballast tanks remain empty in fully loaded
voyage but in ballast condition, the ballast tanks do
not provide buoyancy as they are open to the sea.
This approach is shown in Figure 11. In ballast
condition, ballast tanks are left open, resulting in a
loss of buoyancy and therefore achieve the required
minimum ballast draft. A ship designed to have
open ballast tanks in ballast condition need to be
investigated for the following:
Increase in hull resistance.
To ensure that there is adequate water flow
inside the ballast tanks. Also, the ballast tanks
are internally smooth so that stagnant regions
which may lead to deposition of sediments are
avoided.
The structural requirements arising out of the
flow through pipes are satisfactory.

Fig. 1: Representation of the ballast water problem

Kotinis et al., (2004)2 suggested the ballast

less ship where traditional ballast tanks are replaced
by longitudinal, structural ballast trunks that extend
beneath the cargo region which are flooded with
seawater. Since there is a natural hydrodynamic
pressure difference created between the bow region
and the stern region of a ship due to its motion
through the water, a slow flow is induced in these
open ballast trunks.
The present concept is an improved version of
the ballast less ship suggested by Parsons3,4,5, in
which, the three ballast trunks per side are
connected to the sea through a plenum at the bow
and a second plenum at the stern. In the present
work there are no plenum chambers and, to reduce
the buoyancy of the ship in ballast condition, flow
through elliptical pipes in the longitudinal

INDIAN J. MAR. SCI., VOL 43, NO.11 NOVEMBER 2014

directions are provided in place of the conventional

double bottom tanks throughout the length of the
ship. These pipes function as longitudinal ballast
tanks with valves at forward and aft ends of the ship
which can be controlled. The valves are to be open
to the sea during the ballast voyage to ensure loss in
buoyancy and closed during the loaded departure
with pipes emptied of ballast water. Water enters
the pipes at the bow region of ship and flows out
from stern region of ship. By this mechanism, local
sea water is present in the ship at any point of time
during the ballast journey. Due to the continuous
flow in the pipes the transfer of indigenous aquatic
species will be less.
Initial studies on the flowthrough pipes with
three different types of sections, i.e. circular,
elliptical and rectangular sections were carried by
Sha et al., (2009)6. The study indicated that the
optimum pipe configuration for minimum drag was
elliptical. To carry out the noballast ship concept a
1,05,000 deadweight tonnes crude oil tanker was
selected. This was considered as the base tanker for
all subsequent studies. The principal particulars of
this base tanker are given in Table 1.
Table 1: Main particulars of the base tanker (Sha et al., 2009)6
Displacement
Volume
Lpp
Draft (loaded)
Draft (ballast)
Breadth
Prismatic coefficient Cp
Block coefficient Cb
Speed (service)
Minimum aft draft
Minimum forward draft

129305
126151
233
14.75
8.0
42
0.848
0.847
15.2
7.8
5.825

tonnes
m3
m
m
m
m

knots
m
m

A design exercise was carried out to design the

hull form along with space allocation of the base
tanker. The base tanker was designed as a single
screw ship in which the double bottom was
modified to accommodate elliptical pipes along the
length of the ship. Because of this, the ballast
Laboratory of the Department of Ocean
Engineering and Naval Architecture at IIT
Kharagpur. For comparing the resistances for a
conventional vessel and proposed ballastfree ship
two ships were selected and their scale models were
manufactured so that the following calculations
could be carried out:

capacity reduced from 40000 m3 in a conventional

hull form to 13785.74 m3 in the proposed noballast
tanker. This reduction in ballast capacity was due to
wing tanks which cannot be used for ballasting
automatically being above the low forward draft.
The results of the CAD model for flow through
condition and full load condition are shown in
Table 2 taken from Godey et al, (2012)1. From the
results it was noted that the forward draft was very
low compared with the original tanker and does not
meet the IMO requirements of minimum forward
draft in ballast condition. This is due to the low
ballast water capacity and the shift in centre of
gravity of the entire ballast water in the double
bottom to the aft of midship.
Table 2: Difference between flow through condition and full
load condition (Godey et al., 2012)1
Flow Through
condition

Full Loaded
Condition

Draft Aft (m)

7.915

14.02

Draft Forward (m)

2.148

15.899

Draft Mid(m)

5.032

14.96

To achieve the minimum draft at forward and

aft as per IMO requirements, it was decided to
create a hull form in such a way that the required
forward and aft drafts are achieved. Aspects like
modification in hull shape, height of double bottom
with pipes and position of the tank location were
considered and accordingly different alternative
designs were generated. For different alternatives
the draft aft, draft forward and cargo capacity were
calculated for the fully loaded condition and flow
through (ballast) condition and one hull form was
finalized.
Model Test
Resistance test was conducted on a 1:71 scale
model for the finalized hull form at the
Hydrodynamics

Resistance in full loaded and ballast condition

for the conventional tanker form without pipes
which is like a conventional tanker (Fig. 2).
Resistance in ballast condition for the proposed
ballast free tanker form with pipes in the double
bottom (Fig. 3).

GODEY et al.: CFD ANALYSIS FOR A BALLAST FREE SHIP DESIGN

Figure 2: Model of Conventional Hull Form

Figure 3: Model of Ballast Free Ship

14
Full Loaded Condition
Ballast condition

10

Ballast Condition With Pipes (Flow Through

Condtion)
Poly. (Full Loaded Condition )

RT M (N)

12

8
6
4
2
0
0.4

0.5

0.6

0.7
0.8
Speed model m/sec

0.9

1.1

Figure 4: Resistance Comparison of models at ballast drafts with, without pipes and full loaded condition.

During the manufacture of the ballast free ship

model, i.e. ship with pipes in the double bottom,
some simplifications have been incorporated in the
model, which are not in the proposed design. These
are:
Due to the nonavailability of elliptical
configuration pipes, circular pipes of the same
crosssectional area were used as flow through
pipes.
The circular pipes in the double bottom region
led to increase in light weight of the model.
Therefore, the experiment was conducted at a
higher draft than the required ballast draft.
The model test results were initially reported by
Godey et al., (2012)1 which is shown in Fig. 4 for

the proposed ballast free ship. The increase in

resistance is due to the additional wetted surface
area of the pipes which resulted in an increase in
frictional resistance. It is also observed that the bow
wave height was reduced because of the flow in the
pipes when compared to the conventional hull form
(tested for the same draft).
During the operation in ballast condition,
i.e. flow through condition, the vessel operates with
ballast pipes open to sea until the open ocean water
after which the valves are to be closed and vessel
moves like a normal ship in ballast condition.
Before entering the coastal waters of the port of call
the valves are opened so that the flow is continuous
and no invasive species are carried.

INDIAN J. MAR. SCI., VOL 43, NO.11 NOVEMBER 2014

Though there was an increase in resistance in

the model test, the ship is expected to operate in
this flow through condition for approximately 6%
to 8% of its total voyage between two ports.
CFD Analysis using SHIPFOW
A steady state CFD solver for ship
hydrodynamics, SHIPFLOW for predicting the flow
around the ship and its resistance components,
developed at Chalmers University of Technology
and FLOWTECH International, AB is used in the
present work. To solve the flow around the hull a
global approach has been used which is available in
SHIPFLOW. A global approach means that the
NavierStokes equations are solved in the whole
flow domain. For the specified boundary
conditions, the available options are: inflow,
outflow, noslip, slip and interior conditions. a)
Inflow condition is normally satisfied at an inlet
plane of the computational domain to guarantee an
undisturbed flow in front of a hull and the pressure
gradient normal to the inlet plane is set to zero. b)
Outflow condition: describes zero normal gradients
of velocity and fixed pressure at a downstream
outlet plane of the domain far behind a hull. c) No
slip condition: simulates a solid wall boundary (e.g.

a hull surface) by designating zero value to velocity

components. d) Slip condition: specifies the normal
velocity component and normal gradient of all other
flow quantities (e.g. pressure) as zero. It simulates a
symmetry condition on flat boundaries. e) Interior
condition: describes the boundary data by
interpolation from another grid. In the present
analysis the computations are done for different
loading conditions i.e. full loaded condition, ballast
condition and ballast condition with pipes i.e. the
flow through condition which are validated with
experimental results. The main focus of the analysis
is to check if there is any stagnation point in the
flow through condition with in the pipes how the
fluid particles are moving within the pipe.
Resistance computation is done using
SHIPFLOW for full loaded and ballast condition for
a series of speeds at model and full scale and the
viscous resistance is compared with experimental
results extrapolated with ITTC78 are shown in the
Figures 5&6.The comparison of SHIPFLOW and
model test results shows that there is 10% to 13%
difference in the two methods of simulation of
resistance.

8.5

6
5

6.5
5.5

Cv *1000 (ballast)

cv*1000(Full Loaded)

7.5

Cvm EXPERIMENTALl
Cvm SHIPFLOW
Cvs Experimental
Cvs SHIPFLOW

4.5
3.5

Cvm EXPERIMENTAL
Cvm SHIPFLOW

Cvs EXPERIMENTAL
Cvs SHIPFLOW

2
1

2.5
1.5

0
0.07

0.09

0.11

0.13

0.15

0.17

0.19

Fn
Figure 5: Viscous Resistance Comparison of Experimental
and Shipflow results at models and full scale for full loaded
condition

For the flow through condition, since there is some

uncertainty in calculating the form factor (1+k)
from the experiments and from SHIPFLOW
Froudes extrapolation method is used to compare
the results at model and full scale which are shown
in the figure 7&8.Analysis of the SHIPFLOW
velocity contour plots in x direction shows that

0.08

0.1

0.12
Fn

0.14

0.16

Figure 6:
Viscous Resistance Comparison of
Experimental and Shipflow results at models and ship for
ballast condition without pipes

there are no stagnation points within the pipes.

Though there are some areas in the forward which
indicate the velocity is low but not stagnation which
is visible from the figure 9. To check that the low
velocity is not causing any problem flow lines are
also traced as shown in the figure 10.

12
11
10
9
8
7
6
5
4
3
2

RTM EXPERIMENT
RTM SHIPFLOW

RTS (KN)

RTM (N)

GODEY et al.: CFD ANALYSIS FOR A BALLAST FREE SHIP DESIGN

0.1

0.12

0.14

0.16

0.18

0.2

Fn
Figure 7: Resistance Comparison of Experimental and
Shipflow results at models scale forflow through condition i.e.
with pipes

1900
1800
1700
1600
1500
1400
1300
1200
1100
1000
900

RTs EXPERIMENTAL
RTS SHIPFLOW

0.1

0.12

0.14

0.16

Fn

0.18

0.2

Figure 8: Resistance Comparison of extrapolated and Shipflow

results at full scale for flow through condition i.e. with pipes

X/LPP = 0.067 (forward)

X/LPP = 0.047 (forward)

X/LPP = 0.085 (forward)

X/LPP = 0.119 (forward)

X/LPP = 0.147 (forward)

X/LPP = 0.201 (forward)

X/LPP = 0.227 (forward)

X/LPP = 0.5 (mid)

X/LPP = 0.8 (aft)

X/LPP = 0.83 (aft)

INDIAN J. MAR. SCI., VOL 43, NO.11 NOVEMBER 2014

X/LPP = 0.86 (aft)

X/LPP = 0.894 (aft)

X/LPP = 0.918 (aft)

X/LPP = 0.950 (aft)

Figure 9: Velocity contours in x direction

Figure 10: Flow streamline in the pipes

1. Conclusion
The analysis of the flow lines and velocity
contour plots that are obtained from SHPFLOW for
the flow through condition indicates that there is no
stagnation of water with in the pipe which run
throughout the length of the ship in the double
bottom. The CFD analysis gives an idea on the flow
in the pipes, which is not visualized in the model
experiments. These results are quite interesting and
indicating that there are some low velocity regions
in the forward, where the water start entering the
pipes. The experimental and CFD results show a
deviation of 10 to 13% in the viscous resistance
which can be reduced by refined grid and further
studies need to be carried out for the form factor
being considered.
Reference
1.

Kotinis, M., Parsons, M. G., Lamb, T. and Sirviente

Development and Investigation of the BallastFree Ship
Concept Transactions SNAME, 112 (2004) 206240.

2.

3.

4.
5.

6.

Michael G. Parsons ,Miltiadis Kotinis Hydrodynamic

Optimization Testing of BallastFree Ship Design, (2007)
www.glmri.org
Michael G. Parsons ,Miltiadis Kotinis Further
Development and Optimization of the BallastFree Ship
Design Concept , (2008) www.glmri.org
Michael G. Parsons, MiltiadisKotinis Refinement of the
BallastFree Ship Concept, (2011) www.glmri.org
O. P. Sha, S. C. Misra, U. Gupta Control of Ballast Water
Problems in Ships through Design Developments (2009)
Avinash Godey, S. C. Misra,O. P. Sha Development of a
Ballast Free Ship Design , International Journal Of
Innovative Research & Development (2012)