At present, there are many problems in the middle reaches of the Yangtze river, such as the river channel twists and turns, and the instability of the river, which severely limits the large scale of vessels in inland river and the development of long-distance waterway transportation. A canal is currently being planned to address the problem, and two other issues have to be taken into consideration besides the basic construction cost of the canal. For one thing, restricted waters impose significant effects on ship navigation, so the limit of canal scale is important. For another, the ship wave has a wash effect on the riverbank and breakwaters, which increases the cost of bank embankments and breakwaters (a part of additional construction cost of the canal). In order to help find the optimal scale of the canal, which balances the ship's navigation performance and the construction cost of the canal, a study of the ship's resistance and ship wave propagation in different scale canals is carried on
In this paper, numerical simulation of a river-to-sea ship is conducted based on RANS equations in deep water at first, both in fixed condition and free condition (i.e. the trim and sinkage are allowed). And the validity of the numerical method is verified by comparing the calculation results with the experimental data. Subsequently, for varying water depth, water width and ship's speed, the ship resistance, the wave height at the bank are predicted by the verified numerical methods and the results are analyzed.
The region along the Yangtze river plays an important role in the development of China's economy, for it makes the western undeveloped region and the eastern developed regions connected together. In order to facilitate the development of Yangtze river economic Zone, it is necessary to build large-scale Vessel with greater load tonnage. In this environment, the navigation structure also needs to be improved to meet the needs of the ship's development. In fact, the current channel condition of the Yangtze river is the important factor that restricts the navigation capacity and sets limits on the economic development along the river. For example, there are twists and turns in the middle reaches of the Yangtze river, as shown in Fig. 1.
