Analysis of the Influence of Moonpool Configuration in Calm Water on the Resistance Performance of Drilling Ships

Based on the Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) method, this study systematically investigates the influence mechanism of different moonpool configurations on the hydrodynamic performance of a drilling ship in calm water. Comparative models are established for a standard hull without a moonpool and for hulls with rectangular, square, circular, and I-shaped moonpools. The overset grid technique was employed to achieve high-fidelity simulation of hull motions. The numerical results indicate that the resistance of the drilling ship is significantly affected by the moonpool shape. Under all the designed moonpool schemes, the resistance values of the drilling ship are higher than the resistance level observed in the hull without a moonpool. Moonpools of different shapes all lead to an increase in the ship’s resistance. By comparing the resistance values of the different moonpool design schemes, it is evident that the rectangular moonpool offers a significant advantage in terms of resistance performance. The wave patterns show that as the ship’s speed increases, the wave-making resistance of the drilling ship also increases correspondingly. This observation is consistent with the results obtained from the numerical simulations.