INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE

ON
SHIP DRAG REDUCTION
(SMOOTH-Ships)

ISTANBUL TECHNICAL UNIVERSITY

20-21 May 2010
Macka Campus, Istanbul, Turkey

Editors
Mustafa Insel
Ismail Hakki Helvacioglu
Sebnem Helvacioglu

© Copyright 2010, SMOOTH Consortium

 Paper No: 7

A Numerical Investigation of Air Lubrication Effect on Ship

Resistance

ALİ DOĞRUL, YASEMİN ARIKAN, FAHRİ ÇELİK

Yıldız Technical University

INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON
SHIP DRAG REDUCTION
(SMOOTH-Ships)
20-21 May 2010

Istanbul Technical University

Faculty of Naval Architecture and Ocean Engineering
ISTANBUL-TURKEY
 International Conference on Ship Drag Reduction
SMOOTH-SHIPS, Istanbul, Turkey, 20-21 May 2010

A numerical investigation of air lubrication effect on ship resistance

Ali Doğrul, Yasemin Arıkan, Fahri Çelik
Yıldız Technical University, Istanbul, Turkey

ABSTRACT: The most important component of resistance for low and medium speed displacement ships is
the frictional one. By reducing the frictional resistance (form optimization, air lubrication, air cavity, kite
etc.) total resistance and fuel costs can be decreased. Especially for existing ships, reduction of ship
resistance by form optimization is difficult and not cost effective, but the application of air lubrication can
be adapted to all ships easily. In this study, the air lubrication method is presented and the effect of air
lubrication on resistance of a chemical tanker is investigated numerically. The analyses are performed by a
commercial CFD code solving Navier-Stokes equations. The coefficient of frictional resistance of the ship is
calculated as an equivalent flat plate of the ship’s wetted surface, and the result obtained from CFD and
ITTC’57 are compared. Then for the air lubricated case, the coefficient of frictional resistance is calculated
and the result from the current case is compared with those of ITTC’57 and the case without air lubrication..

turbulent boundary layer [2]. The first micro-bubble

1 INTRODUCTION
For reduced fuel consumption and for low CO2
emissions on ships it is desired to reduce the ship
drag. The drag force is divided into the form drag
and the frictional drag. There are many possibilities
to reduce the form drag by means of form
optimization procedures. A reduction in the
frictional drag depends on the wetted surface area of
a ship and the fluid flow around it.
Since it is difficult to change the wetted surface area,
an application to vary the viscosity or the boundary
layer around the ship has to be made. Recently,
studies about air lubrication methods are carried out
for reducing the drag forces on ships. There are three
general approaches in this area [1]:
drag reduction experiments were made by
McCormick and Bhattacharya [3]. They
investigated the drag force of a fully submerged
body of revolution covered with hydrogen bubbles
obtained by electrolysis. This study was followed by
experiments by Bogdevich et al. [4] in which a
simpler flat plate geometry and air was used. Studies
made by Madavan et al. [5], Kato et al. 6], Kodama
et al. [7] followed this work. Experimental results of
micro-bubble application by Madavan et al. showed
an 80% decrease of the frictional drag on a flat plate
[5].

• Injection of air bubbles (micro-bubbles)

along the hull
• Air films under the hull
• Air cavities in the bottom of the hull

The micro-bubble method gives the possibility to Fig. 1. Micro-bubble application [6].
reduce the friction without the need of a change in
the present hull form of a ship. The application of
the micro-bubble method reduces the surface friction
by a variation of the viscosity of the fluid around the
ship and makes a modification in the structure of the
 commercial CAD program Rhinoceros. The plate
and the domain are shown in Fig. 3 and the main
particulars of the chemical tanker are summarized in
Table 1 [14].

Fig. 2. Micro-bubble application [6].

The bubble sizes and location of the injection points

are important parameters in the persistence of drag
reduction. For example a drag increase is observed
when the bubble diameters are too large compared to
the scale of the boundary layer in cases for example
when the ship is slow and the diameter of the
bubbles are large (2-3 mm) [9]. The relation between
the bubble size and the drag reduction was examined
by Kato et al. [7] by changing the flow velocity. The
results showed that the decrease in the bubble size
according to the increase in the main flow velocity Fig. 3. Flat plate and domain.
cause a larger reduction rate of skin friction [9].
Experiments by Watanabe & Shirose [10], Table 1. Main particulars of the chemical tanker [17].
Takahashi et al. [11] and Sanders et al. [12] indicate
Length between perp., LBP 87.55 m
that air lubrication do not persist over long Waterline length, LWL 89.38 m
length/time scales. In the experiment executed by Breadth, B 10.58 m
Watanabe it was concluded that after 20m. of a 40m. Depth, D 6.85 m
long plate the effect of micro-bubbles was Draught, T 5.42 m
disappeared. Takahashi made a similar experiment Displacement, Δ 5500 ton
using a 12 m-long flat plate. In the experiment of Block coefficient, CB 0.77
Sanders the micro-bubbles were pushed out of the Wetted Area, S 945 m2
boundary layer after a few meters of the air injectors Design speed, VS 14 knot
[1]. At the same time experiments made in model Air inlet position, % LWL % 10
scale on ships showed that a drag reduction up to behind FP
%26 is possible [13].
The discretization of the flow equations requires the
In this work the air lubrication method is applied on subdivision of the computational domain into a grid
a chemical tanker for reduce the ship resistance. The of sufficiently small cells as shown in Fig. 4. This
analysis are made in the commercial CFD program figure shows the structured grid for the plate and the
FLUENT by the acceptance of the ship geometry whole working domain.
and the wetted surface area as a flat plate. The ship
resistance and the drag coefficients are calculated for
5 different Froude numbers and 2 different air
velocity. At the same time analyses are made for the
case with no air lubrication for the same Froude
numbers and frictional resistance coefficients for a
comparison with the results found by the ITTC’57
formula and with those of the air lubrication case.

2. MATHEMATICAL MODEL

In this study, for the prediction of the frictional

Fig. 4. Generated mesh structure for whole domain.
resistance of a chemical tanker, the wetted surface of
the ship is considered as a flat plate and the flat plate
The plate under investigation is located in a
and the flow domain are generated by using a
rectangular domain. In Fig. 4, the generated grid
system for the rectangular domain covered the plate.
All the grid system for the CFD calculation is
generated by using GAMBIT pre-processor of
FLUENT. Approximately 400000 hexahedral mesh
elements are used for the rectangular domain. The
flow is considered as 3-dimensional and fully
turbulent. The plate itself is specified as wall type
and surfaces of the whole domain are considered as
wall. The bottom surface is considered as a slip wall.
Boundary conditions of the whole domain are given
in Fig.5. Uniform velocity, turbulent kinetic energy
and its dissipation rate are given at the inlet of the
domain, while pressure outlet is specified at the
outlet. The solver considered here uses finite volume
method as discretization scheme. The flow is steady,
incompressible, and three-dimensional. As
turbulence closure Standard k-ε (SKE) turbulence
model with enhanced wall-function is used. The
SKE turbulence model is one of several two-
equation models that have developed over the years.
It is probably the most widely and thoroughly tested
of them all. As it is well known that SKE is a semi-
empirical model based on model transport equations
for the turbulence kinetic energy, k and its
dissipation, ε. Because of two phase flow, mixture
model is chosen for multiphase flow. Because of
importance of volume fraction, relaxation factors for
volume fraction, turbulence kinetic energy and
turbulence dissipation rate are decreased to a value
of 0.2.
Fig. 5.Boundary conditions for whole domain.
The frictional force (RF) from CFD analysis is used to calculate
the coefficient of frictional resistance (CF) :
RF (1)
C =
F
1
ρ SV 2
RF and CF values are important for the validation with ITTC
and CFD methods. The ITTC’1957 formula is given below:
0 .0 7 5 (2)
C =
( lo g Rn − 2)
F 2
The air lubrication around the flat plate is generated by
injecting air from a strip with a breadth of LWL/100 at % 10 of
LWL behind the fore peak. Diameter of bubble is chosen as 10
μm.
For reliability it is needed to validate the CFD code with the
ITTC results. For this purpose, some analyses are run without
air for validation. In Table 2, results gathered from ITTC
formula (Eq. 2) and CFD are given.
Table 2. CF from ITTC and CFD without air lubrication.
CF *103 
ε 
Fn  ITTC   CFD  
(%) 
0.1  1.853  1.905  2.81
0.2  1.689  1.743  3.18
0.24  1.647  1.701  3.27
0.3  1.603  1.658  3.40
0.4  1.546  1.601  3.53
As seen from Table 2 for almost all Froude numbers
the difference between the frictional resistance
coefficient obtained from CFD and the ITTC’57
formula is about %3. It is observed that the
difference decreases for low Froude numbers.
3. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
The main purpose of this study is to show the effect
of air lubrication to reduce the drag of the ship.
Some computational analyses are performed on a
personal computer of 2.33 GHz dual core with 3GB
RAM. After seven work days running, some results
are obtained as shown in Figs. 6-7. The analyses are
carried out for the following Froude numbers; 0.1,
0.2, 0.24, 0.3 and 0.4. The Froude number for the
design speed of the chemical tanker is 0.24.
Fig.6 and Fig.7 shows the volume fraction contours
for air near the wetted surface for Froude numbers
between 0.1 and 0.4. In the case of Fig.6 the inflow
air velocity is taken as 0.72 m/s while in Fig.7 the
inflow air velocity is 0.1 m/s.
 (a)Fn=0.1 (a)Fn=0.1

(b)Fn=0.2
(b)Fn=0.2

(c)Fn=0.3
(c)Fn=0.3

(d)Fn=0.4
(d)Fn=0.4

(e)Fn=0.5
(e)Fn=0.5
Fig. 7. Volume fraction contours for air on the wetted surface
(air flow velocity VB=0.1 m/s).
Fig. 6. Volume fraction contours for air on the wetted surface
(air flow velocity VB=0.72 m/s).
Table 2. Results air lubrication for VB=0.72 m/s.
As shown in Fig.6 and Fig.7 for low froude numbers
the area that the air covers around the flat plate is Gain 
larger as expected. For the cases with large air flow Fn  RF (N)  CF *103 
(%) 
velocity (Fig.6) the air spread is larger. 3379,9
The frictional resistance and the frictional resistance 0,1  0,796  57,05 
0 
coefficients of the ship for different Froude numbers 14596,
and for different air flow velocities are given for the 0,2  0,859  49,13 
54 
air lubrication case in Table 2 and Table 3. In Fig.8 22968,
and Fig.9 for two different air flow velocities the 0,24  0,914  44,48 
26 
decrease percent of the ship frictional resistance thus 37443,
the gain quantity by the application of the air 0,3  0,980  38,90 
85 
lubrication method are shown for different froude 72543,
numbers. 0,4  1,068  30,96 
27 

Table 3. Results air lubrication for VB=0.1 m/s.
Gain 
Fn  RF (N)  CF *103  flow velocities the complete hull of the ship will be
(%) 
6440,0
0,1  1,517  18,16  negative influence on the propulsive performance.
8 
27085,
0,2 
74 
1,595  5,61  propulsive performance of a ship is out of the scope
40072,
0,24 
61 
1,595  3,14  for the 3-D case of the ship geometry including the
60811,
0,3  1,591  0,77 
65 
106992
0,4  1,575  ‐1,83 
,79  The frictional resistance forms an important part of
Fig. 8. Drag reduction rate for VB=0.72 m/s.
Fig. 9. Drag reduction rate for VB=0.1 m/s.
As seen from Table 2 and Fig.8 (air flow
velocity=0.72 m/s) the gain obtained from the air
lubrication method for low Froude numbers reach to
%57. This gain decreases by the increase of the
Froude number and is about %44.5 in the design
speed. For the cases where the air flow velocity is
0.1 m/s (Table 3 and Fig.9) the gain in the design
speed is about %3 while in low Froude numbers it
can increase up to %18. For high Froude numbers
the air lubrication method cause a slightly increase
of the resistance. From the figures below it is
observed that the decrease of the frictional resistance
(gain) increases by the increase of the velocity while
the air flow velocity increases. For very high air
covered by micro-bubbles and this could have a
The influence of the air lubrication method over the
of this work. More detailed analyses should be made
propeller.
4. CONCLUSION
the total resistance of displacement ships of medium
and low speed. Since the frictional resistance
depends on the hull form of a ship it is very difficult
to decrease it on existing ships. The air lubrication
method which dates back to 1970’s is still a
promising research method. In this study the
numerical application of the air lubrication method
on a chemical tanker is investigated. The analyses
are made for different Froude numbers and air flow
velocities for a flat plate which area is equivalent to
the wetted surface area of the ship. It is observed
that a gain up to %45 can be obtained in the design
Froude number of the ship. The gain increases for
low Froude numbers and high air flow velocities.
But the increase of the air flow velocity could have a
negative influence on the propulsive performance of
the ship. In the next study, it is considered to
investigate the influence of the air flow velocity and
location, for the 3-D ship geometry with propeller on
the ship resistance and on the propulsive
performance.
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