Vertical Bending Moment in Extreme Regular Waves—Benchmarking of Numerical Codes Against Model Tests

A benchmark study of 10 different numerical methods for ship motion and load assessment is presented. Pitch motions and midship vertical bending moments are compared to model test results for a containership at zero speed in head regular waves. The wave steepness is varied from 2.1% to 10.5%. The model tests show that pitch and the vertical bending moment (VBM) display nonlinear behavior even for low-steepness waves. It is demonstrated that computational fluid dynamics (CFD) methods can reproduce the ship responses with good accuracy, even in very steep waves, involving green water and parts of the ship going in and out of water. Weakly nonlinear potential-theory methods tend to overestimate the pitch motions and the sagging moments as the wave steepness increases. For the vertical bending moment in steep waves, the 3D panel methods did not give significantly better results than those obtained with the nonlinear strip theories.