Numerical simulation of ship waves in the presence of a uniform current
CongfangAiYuxiangMaLeiSunGuohaiDongState Key Laboratory of Coastal and Offshore Engineering, Dalian University of Technology, Dalian, 116024, China
Highlights
• Ship waves in the presence of a uniform current are studied by a non-hydrostatic model.
• Effects of a following current on characteristic wave parameters are investigated.
• Effects of an opposing current on characteristic wave parameters are investigated.
• The response of the maximum water level elevation to the ship draft is discussed.
Abstract
이 논문은 균일한 해류가 존재할 때 선박파의 생성 및 전파를 시뮬레이션하기 위한 비정역학적 모델을 제시합니다. 선박 선체의 움직임을 표현하기 위해 움직이는 압력장 방법이 모델에 통합되었습니다.
뒤따르거나 반대 방향의 균일한 흐름이 있는 경우의 선박 파도의 수치 결과를 흐름이 없는 선박 파도의 수치 결과와 비교합니다. 추종 또는 반대 균일 전류가 존재할 때 계산된 첨단선 각도는 분석 솔루션과 잘 일치합니다. 추종 균일 전류와 반대 균일 전류가 특성파 매개변수에 미치는 영향을 제시하고 논의합니다.
선박 흘수에 대한 최대 수위 상승의 응답은 추종 또는 반대의 균일한 흐름이 있는 경우에도 표시되며 흐름이 없는 선박 파도의 응답과 비교됩니다. 선박 선체 측면의 최대 수위 상승은 Froude 수 Fr’=Us/gh의 특정 범위에 대해 다음과 같은 균일한 흐름의 존재에 의해 증가될 수 있음이 밝혀졌습니다.
여기서 Us는 선박 속도이고 h는 물입니다. 깊이. 균일한 해류를 무시하면 추종류나 반대류가 존재할 때 선박 흘수에 대한 최대 수위 상승의 응답이 과소평가될 수 있습니다.
본 연구는 선박파의 해석에 있어 균일한 해류의 영향을 고려해야 함을 시사합니다.
This paper presents a non-hydrostatic model to simulate the generation and propagation of ship waves in the presence of a uniform current. A moving pressure field method is incorporated into the model to represent the movement of a ship hull. Numerical results of ship waves in the presence of a following or an opposing uniform current are compared with those of ship waves without current. The calculated cusp-line angles in the presence of a following or opposing uniform current agree well with analytical solutions. The effects of a following uniform current and an opposing uniform current on the characteristic wave parameters are presented and discussed. The response of the maximum water level elevation to the ship draft is also presented in the presence of a following or an opposing uniform current and is compared with that for ship waves without current. It is found that the maximum water level elevation lateral to the ship hull can be increased by the presence of a following uniform current for a certain range of Froude numbers Fr′=Us/gh, where Us is the ship speed and h is the water depth. If the uniform current is neglected, the response of the maximum water level elevation to the ship draft in the presence of a following or an opposing current can be underestimated. The present study indicates that the effect of a uniform current should be considered in the analysis of ship waves.
Keywords
Ship waves, Non-hydrostatic model, Following current, Opposing current, Wave parameters
1. Introduction
Similar to wind waves, ships sailing across the sea can also create free-surface undulations ranging from ripples to waves of large size (Grue, 2017, 2020). Ship waves can cause sediment suspension and engineering structures damage and even pose a threat to flora and fauna living near the embankments of waterways (Dempwolff et al., 2022). It is quite important to understand ship waves in various environments. The study of ship waves has been conducted over a century. A large amount of research (Almström et al., 2021; Bayraktar and Beji, 2013; David et al., 2017; Ertekin et al., 1986; Gourlay, 2001; Havelock, 1908; Lee and Lee, 2019; Samaras and Karambas, 2021; Shi et al., 2018) focused on the generation and propagation of ship waves without current. When a ship navigates in the sea or in a river where tidal flows or river flows always exist, the effect of currents should be taken into account. However, the effect of currents on the characteristic parameters of ship waves is still unclear, because very few publications have been presented on this topic.
Over the past two decades, many two-dimensional (2D) Boussinesq-type models (Bayraktar and Beji, 2013; Dam et al., 2008; David et al., 2017; Samaras and Karambas, 2021; Shi et al., 2018) were developed to examine ship waves. For example, Bayraktar and Beji (2013) solved Boussinesq equations with improved dispersion characteristics to simulate ship waves due to a moving pressure field. David et al. (2017) employed a Boussinesq-type model to investigate the effects of the pressure field and its propagation speed on characteristic wave parameters. All of these Boussinesq-type models aimed to simulate ship waves without current except for that of Dam et al. (2008), who investigated the effect of currents on the maximum wave height of ship waves in a narrow channel.
In addition to Boussinesq-type models, numerical models based on the Navier-Stokes equations (NSE) or Euler equations are also capable of resolving ship waves. Lee and Lee (2019, 2021) employed the FLOW-3D model to simulate ship waves without current and ship waves in the presence of a uniform current to confirm their equations for ship wave crests. FLOW-3D is a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) software based on the NSE, and the volume of fluid (VOF) method is used to capture the moving free surface. However, VOF-based NSE models are computationally expensive due to the treatment of the free surface. To efficiently track the free surface, non-hydrostatic models employ the so-called free surface equation and can be solved efficiently. One pioneering application for the simulation of ship waves by the non-hydrostatic model was initiated by Ma (2012) and named XBeach. Recently, Almström et al. (2021) validated XBeach with improved dispersive behavior by comparison with field measurements. XBeach employed in Almström et al. (2021) is a 2-layer non-hydrostatic model and is accurate up to Kh=4 for the linear dispersion relation (de Ridder et al., 2020), where K=2π/L is the wavenumber. L is the wavelength, and h is the still water depth. However, no applications of non-hydrostatic models on the simulation of ship waves in the presence of a uniform current have been published. For more advances in the numerical modelling of ship waves, the reader is referred to Dempwolff et al. (2022).
This paper investigates ship waves in the presence of a uniform current by using a non-hydrostatic model (Ai et al., 2019), in which a moving pressure field method is incorporated to represent the movement of a ship hull. The model solves the incompressible Euler equations by using a semi-implicit algorithm and is associated with iterating to solve the Poisson equation. The model with two, three and five layers is accurate up to Kh= 7, 15 and 40, respectively (Ai et al., 2019) in resolving the linear dispersion relation. To the best of our knowledge, ship waves in the presence of currents have been studied theoretically (Benjamin et al., 2017; Ellingsen, 2014; Li and Ellingsen, 2016; Li et al., 2019.) and numerically (Dam et al., 2008; Lee and Lee, 2019, 2021). However, no publications have presented the effects of a uniform current on characteristic wave parameters except for Dam et al. (2008), who investigated only the effect of currents on the maximum wave height in a narrow channel for the narrow relative Froude number Fr=(Us−Uc)/gh ranging from 0.47 to 0.76, where Us is the ship speed and Uc is the current velocity. To reveal the effect of currents on the characteristic parameters of ship waves, the main objectives of this paper are (1) to validate the capability of the proposed model to resolve ship waves in the presence of a uniform current, (2) to investigate the effects of a following or an opposing current on characteristic wave parameters including the maximum water level elevation and the leading wave period in the ship wave train, (3) to show the differences in characteristic wave parameters between ship waves in the presence of a uniform current and those without current when the same relative Froude number Fr is specified, and (4) to examine the response of the maximum water level elevation to the ship draft in the presence of a uniform current.
The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. The non-hydrostatic model for ship waves is described in Section 2. Section 3 presents numerical validations for ship waves. Numerical results and discussions about the effects of a uniform current on characteristic wave parameters are provided in Section 4, and a conclusion is presented in Section 5.
2. Non-hydrostatic model for ship waves
2.1. Governing equations
The 3D incompressible Euler equations are expressed in the following form:(1)∂u∂x+∂v∂y+∂w∂z=0(2)∂u∂t+∂u2∂x+∂uv∂y+∂uw∂z=−∂p∂x(3)∂v∂t+∂uv∂x+∂v2∂y+∂vw∂z=−∂p∂y(4)∂w∂t+∂uw∂x+∂vw∂y+∂w2∂z=−∂p∂z−gwhere t is the time; u(x,y,z,t), v(x,y,z,t) and w(x,y,z,t) are the velocity components in the horizontal x, y and vertical z directions, respectively; p(x,y,z,t) is the pressure divided by a constant reference density; and g is the gravitational acceleration.
The pressure p(x,y,z,t) can be expressed as(5)p=ps+g(η−z)+qwhere ps(x,y,t) is the pressure at the free surface, η(x,y,t) is the free surface elevation, and q(x,y,z,t) is the non-hydrostatic pressure.
η(x,y,t) is calculated by the following free-surface equation:(6)∂η∂t+∂∂x∫−hηudz+∂∂y∫−hηvdz=0where z=−h(x,y) is the bottom surface.
To generate ship waves, ps(x,y,t) is determined by the following slender-body type pressure field (Bayraktar and Beji, 2013; David et al., 2017; Samaras and Karambas, 2021):
For −L/2≤x’≤L/2,−B/2≤y’≤B/2(7)ps(x,y,t)|t=0=pm[1−cL(x′/L)4][1−cB(y′/B)2]exp[−a(y′/B)2]where x′=x−x0 and y′=y−y0. (x0,y0) is the center of the pressure field, pm is the peak pressure defined at (x0,y0), and L and B are the lengthwise and breadthwise parameters, respectively. cL, cB and a are set to 16, 2 and 16, respectively.
2.2. Numerical algorithms
In this study, the generation of ship waves is incorporated into the semi-implicit non-hydrostatic model developed by Ai et al. (2019). The 3D grid system used in the model is built from horizontal rectangular grids by adding horizontal layers. The horizontal layers are distributed uniformly along the water depth, which means the layer thickness is defined by Δz=(η+h)/Nz, where Nz is the number of horizontal layers.
In the solution procedure, the first step is to generate ship waves by implementing Eq. (7) together with the prescribed ship track. In the second step, Eqs. (1), (2), (3), (4) are solved by the pressure correction method, which can be subdivided into three stages. The first stage is to compute intermediate velocities un+1/2, vn+1/2, and wn+1/2 by solving Eqs. (2), (3), (4), which contain the non-hydrostatic pressure at the preceding time level. In the second stage, the Poisson equation for the non-hydrostatic pressure correction term is solved on the graphics processing unit (GPU) in conjunction with the conjugate gradient method. The third stage is to compute the new velocities un+1, vn+1, and wn+1 by correcting the intermediate values after including the non-hydrostatic pressure correction term. In the discretization of Eqs. (2), (3), the gradient terms of the water surface ∂η/∂x and ∂η/∂y are discretized by means of the semi-implicit method (Vitousek and Fringer, 2013), in which the implicitness factor θ=0.5 is used. The model is second-order accurate in time for free-surface flows. More details about the model can be found in Ai et al. (2019).
3. Model validation
In this section, we validate the proposed model in resolving ship waves. The numerical experimental conditions are provided in Table 1 and Table 2. In Table 2, Case A with the current velocity of Uc = 0.0 m/s represents ship waves without current. Both Case B and Case C correspond to the cases in the presence of a following current, while Case D and Case E represent the cases in the presence of an opposing current. The current velocities are chosen based on the observed currents at 40.886° N, 121.812° E, which is in the Liaohe Estuary. The measured data were collected from 14:00 on September 18 (GMT + 08:00) to 19:00 on September 19 in 2021. The maximum flood velocity is 1.457 m/s, and the maximum ebb velocity is −1.478 m/s. The chosen current velocities are between the maximum flood velocity and the maximum ebb velocity.
Table 1. Summary of ship speeds.
Case | Water depth h (m) | Ship speed Us (m/s) | Froude number Fr′=Us/gh |
---|---|---|---|
1 | 6.0 | 4.57 | 0.6 |
2 | 6.0 | 5.35 | 0.7 |
3 | 6.0 | 6.15 | 0.8 |
4 | 6.0 | 6.90 | 0.9 |
5 | 6.0 | 7.093 | 0.925 |
6 | 6.0 | 7.28 | 0.95 |
7 | 6.0 | 7.476 | 0.975 |
8 | 6.0 | 7.86 | 1.025 |
9 | 6.0 | 8.06 | 1.05 |
10 | 6.0 | 8.243 | 1.075 |
11 | 6.0 | 8.45 | 1.1 |
12 | 6.0 | 9.20 | 1.2 |
13 | 6.0 | 9.97 | 1.3 |
14 | 6.0 | 10.75 | 1.4 |
15 | 6.0 | 11.50 | 1.5 |
16 | 6.0 | 12.30 | 1.6 |
17 | 6.0 | 13.05 | 1.7 |
18 | 6.0 | 13.80 | 1.8 |
19 | 6.0 | 14.60 | 1.9 |
20 | 6.0 | 15.35 | 2.0 |
Table 2. Summary of current velocities.
Case | A | B | C | D | E |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Current velocity Uc (m/s) | 0.0 | 0.5 | 1.0 | −0.5 | −1.0 |
Notably, the Froude number Fr′=Us/gh presented in Table 1 is defined by the ship speed Us only and is different from the relative Froude number Fr when a uniform current is presented. According to the theory of Lee and Lee (2021), with the same relative Froude number, the cusp-line angles in the presence of a following or an opposing uniform current are identical to those without current. As a result, for the test cases presented in Table 1, Table 2, all calculated cusp-line angles follow the analytical solution of Havelock (1908), when the relative Froude number Fr is introduced.
As shown in Fig. 1, the dimensions of the computational domain are −420≤x≤420 m and −200≤y≤200 m, which are similar to those of David et al. (2017). The ship track follows the x axis and ranges from −384 m to 384 m. The ship hull is represented by Eq. (7), in which the length L and the beam B are set to 14.0 m and 7.0 m, respectively, and the peak pressure value is pm= 5000 Pa. In the numerical simulations, grid convergence tests reveal that the horizontal grid spacing of Δx=Δy= 1.0 m and two horizontal layers are adequate. The numerical results with different numbers of horizontal layers are shown in the Appendix.

Fig. 2, Fig. 3 compare the calculated cusp-line angles θc with the analytical solutions of Havelock (1908) for ship waves in the presence of a following uniform current and an opposing uniform current, respectively. The calculated cusp-line angles without current are also depicted in Fig. 2, Fig. 3. All calculated cusp-line angles are in good agreement with the analytical solutions, except that the model tends to underpredict the cusp-line angle for 0.9<Fr<1.0. Notably, a similar underprediction of the cusp-line angle can also be found in David et al. (2017).


4. Results and discussions
This section presents the effects of a following current and opposing current on the maximum water level elevation and the leading wave period in the wave train based on the test cases presented in Table 1, Table 2. Moreover, the response of the maximum water level elevation to the ship draft in the presence of a uniform current is examined.
4.1. Effects of a following current on characteristic wave parameters
To present the effect of a following current on the maximum wave height, the variations of the maximum water level elevation ηmax with the Froude number Fr′ at gauge points G1 and G2 are depicted in Fig. 4. The positions of gauge points G1 and G2 are shown in Fig. 1. The maximum water level elevation is an analogue to the maximum wave height and is presented in this study, because maximum wave heights at different positions away from the ship track vary throughout the wave train (David et al., 2017). In general, the variations of ηmax with the Froude number Fr′ in the three cases show a similar behavior, in which with the increase in Fr′, ηmax increases and then decreases. The presence of the following currents decreases ηmax for Fr′≤0.8 and Fr′≥1.2. Specifically, the following currents have a significant effect on ηmax for Fr′≤0.8. Notably, ηmax can be increased by the presence of the following currents for 0.9≤Fr′≤1.1. Compared with Case A, at location G1 ηmax is amplified 1.25 times at Fr′=0.925 in Case B and 1.31 times at Fr′=1.025 in Case C. Similarly, at location G2 ηmax is amplified 1.15 times at Fr′=1.025 in Case B and 1.11 times at Fr′=1.075 in Case C. The fact that ηmax can be increased by the presence of a following current for 0.9≤Fr′≤1.1 implies that if a following uniform current is neglected, then ηmax may be underestimated.

To show the effect of a following current on the wave period, Fig. 5 depicts the variation of the leading wave period Tp in the wave train at gauge point G2 with the Froude number Fr′. Similar to David et al. (2017), Tp is defined by the wave period of the first wave with a leading trough in the wave train. The leading wave periods for Fr′= 0.6 and 0.7 were not given in Case B and Case C, because the leading wave heights for Fr′= 0.6 and 0.7 are too small to discern the leading wave periods. Compared with Case A, the presence of a following current leads to a larger Tp for 0.925≤Fr′≤1.1 and a smaller Tp for Fr′≥1.3. For Fr′= 0.8 and 0.9, Tp in Case B is larger than that in Case A and Tp in Case C is smaller than that in Case A. In all three cases, Tp decreases with increasing Fr′ for Fr′>1.0. However, this decreasing trend becomes very gentle after Fr′≥1.4. Notably, as shown in Fig. 5, Fr′=1.2 tends to be a transition point at which the following currents have a very limited effect on Tp. Moreover, before the transition point, Tp in Case B and Case C are larger than that in Case A (only for 0.925≤Fr′≤1.2), but after the transition point the reverse is true.

As mentioned previously, the cusp-line angles for ship waves in the presence of a following or an opposing current are identical to those for ship waves only with the same relative Froude number Fr. However, with the same Fr, the characteristic parameters of ship waves in the presence of a following or an opposing current are quite different from those of ship waves without current. Fig. 6 shows the variations of the maximum water level elevation ηmax with Fr at gauge points G1 and G2 for ship waves in the presence of a following uniform current. Overall, the relationship curves between ηmax and Fr in Case B and Case C are lower than those in Case A. It is inferred that with the same Fr, ηmax in the presence of a following current is smaller than that without current. Fig. 7 shows the variation of the leading wave period Tp in the wave train at gauge point G2 with Fr for ship waves in the presence of a following uniform current. The overall relationship curves between Tp and Fr in Case B and Case C are also lower than those in Case A for 0.9≤Fr≤2.0. It can be inferred that with the same Fr, Tp in the presence of a following current is smaller than that without current for Fr≥0.9.


To compare the numerical results between the case of ship waves only and the case of ship waves in the presence of a following current with the same Fr, Fig. 8 shows the wave patterns for Fr=1.2. To obtain the case of ship waves in the presence of a following current with Fr=1.2, the ship speed Us=9.7 m/s and the current velocity Uc=0.5 m/s are adopted. Fig. 8 indicates that both the calculated cusp-line angles for the case of Us=9.2 m/s and Uc=0.0 m/s and the case of Us=9.7 m/s and Uc=0.5 m/s are equal to 56.5°, which follows the theory of Lee and Lee (2021). Fig. 9 depicts the comparison of the time histories of the free surface elevation at gauge point G2 for Fr=1.2 between the case of ship waves only and the case of ship waves in the presence of a following current. The time when the ship wave just arrived at gauge point G2 is defined as t′=0. Both the maximum water level elevation and the leading wave period in the case of Us=9.2 m/s and Uc=0.0 m/s are larger than those in the case of Us=9.7 m/s and Uc=0.5 m/s, which is consistent with the inferences based on Fig. 6, Fig. 7.


Fig. 10 shows the response of the maximum water level elevation ηmax to the ship draft at gauge point G2 for Fr′= 1.2 in the presence of a following uniform current. pm ranges from 2500 Pa to 40,000 Pa with an interval of Δp= 2500 Pa pm0= 2500 Pa represents a reference case. ηmax0 denotes the maximum water level elevation corresponding to the case of pm0= 2500 Pa. The best-fit linear trend lines obtained by linear regression analysis for the three responses are also depicted in Fig. 10. In general, all responses of ηmax to the ship draft show a linear relationship. The coefficients of determination for the three linear trend lines are R2= 0.9901, 0.9941 and 0.9991 for Case A, Case B and Case C, respectively. R2 is used to measure how close the numerical results are to the linear trend lines. The closer R2 is to 1.0, the more linear the numerical results tend to be. As a result, the relationship curve between ηmax and the ship draft in the presence of a following uniform current tends to be more linear than that without current. Notably, with the increase in pmpm0, ηmax increases faster in Case B and Case C than Case A. This implies that neglecting the following currents can lead to the underestimation of the response of ηmax to the ship draft.

4.2. Effects of an opposing current on characteristic wave parameters
Fig. 11 shows the variations of the maximum water level elevation ηmax with the Froude number Fr′ at gauge points G1 and G2 for ship waves in the presence of an opposing uniform current. The presence of opposing uniform currents leads to a significant reduction in ηmax at the two gauge points for 0.6≤Fr′≤2.0. Especially for Fr′=0.6, the decrease in ηmax is up to 73.8% in Case D and 78.4% in Case E at location G1 and up to 93.8% in Case D and 95.3% in Case E at location G2 when compared with Case A. Fig. 12 shows the variations of the leading wave period Tp at gauge point G2 with the Froude number Fr′ for ship waves in the presence of an opposing uniform current. The leading wave periods for Fr′= 0.6 and 0.7 were also not provided in Case D and Case E due to the small leading wave heights. In general, Tp decreases with increasing Fr′ in Case D and Case E for 0.8≤Fr′≤2.0. Tp in Case D and Case E are larger than that in Case A for Fr′≥1.0.


Fig. 13 depicts the variations of the maximum water level elevation ηmax with the relative Froude number Fr at gauge points G1 and G2 for ship waves in the presence of an opposing uniform current. Similar to Case B and Case C shown in Fig. 6, the overall relationship curves between ηmax and Fr in Case D and Case E are lower than those in Case A. This implies that with the same Fr, ηmax in the presence of an opposing current is also smaller than that without current. Fig. 14 depicts the variations of the leading wave period Tp in the wave train at gauge point G2 with Fr for ship waves in the presence of an opposing uniform current. Similar to Case B and Case C shown in Fig. 7, the overall relationship curves between Tp and Fr in Case D and Case E are lower than those in Case A for 0.9≤Fr≤2.0. This also implies that with the same Fr, Tp in the presence of an opposing current is smaller than that without current.


Fig. 15 shows a comparison of the wave pattern for Fr=1.2 between the case of ship waves only and the case of ship waves in the presence of an opposing current. The case of the ship wave in the presence of an opposing current with Fr=1.2 is obtained by setting the ship speed Us=8.7 m/s and the current velocity Uc=−0.5 m/s. As expected (Lee and Lee, 2021), both calculated cusp-line angles are identical. Fig. 16 depicts the comparison of the time histories of the free surface elevation at gauge point G2 for Fr=1.2 between the case of ship waves only and the case of ship waves in the presence of an opposing current. The maximum water level elevation in the case of Us=9.2 m/s and Uc=0.0 m/s is larger than that in the case of Us=8.7 m/s and Uc=−0.5 m/s, while the reverse is true for the leading wave period. Fig. 16 is consistent with the inferences based on Fig. 13, Fig. 14.


Fig. 17 depicts the response of the maximum water level elevation ηmax to the ship draft at gauge point G2 for Fr′= 1.2 in the presence of an opposing uniform current. Similarly, the response of ηmax to the ship draft in the presence of an opposing uniform current shows a linear relationship. The coefficients of determination for the three linear trend lines are R2= 0.9901, 0.9955 and 0.9987 for Case A, Case D and Case E, respectively. This indicates that the relationship curve between ηmax and the ship draft in the presence of an opposing uniform current also tends to be more linear than that without current. In addition, ηmax increases faster with increasing pmpm0 in Case D and Case E than Case A, implying that the response of ηmax to the ship draft can also be underestimated by neglecting opposing currents.

5. Conclusions
A non-hydrostatic model incorporating a moving pressure field method was used to investigate characteristic wave parameters for ship waves in the presence of a uniform current. The calculated cusp-line angles for ship waves in the presence of a following or an opposing uniform current were in good agreement with analytical solutions, demonstrating that the proposed model can accurately resolve ship waves in the presence of a uniform current.
The model results showed that the presence of a following current can result in an increase in the maximum water level elevation ηmax for 0.9≤Fr′≤1.1, while the presence of an opposing current leads to a significant reduction in ηmax for 0.6≤Fr′≤2.0. The leading wave period Tp can be increased for 0.925≤Fr′≤1.2 and reduced for Fr′≥1.3 due to the presence of a following current. However, the presence of an opposing current leads to an increase in Tp for Fr′≥1.0.
Although with the same relative Froude number Fr, the cusp-line angles for ship waves in the presence of a following or an opposing current are identical to those for ship waves without current, the maximum water level elevation ηmax and leading wave period Tp in the presence of a following or an opposing current are quite different from those without current. The present model results imply that with the same Fr, ηmax in the presence of a following or an opposing current is smaller than that without current for Fr≥0.6, and Tp in the presence of a following or an opposing current is smaller than that without current for Fr≥0.9.
The response of ηmax to the ship draft in the presence of a following current or an opposing current is similar to that without current and shows a linear relationship. However, the presence of a following or an opposing uniform current results in more linear responses of ηmax to the ship draft. Moreover, more rapid responses of ηmax to the ship draft are obtained when a following current or an opposing current is presented. This implies that the response of ηmax to the ship draft in the presence of a following current or an opposing current can be underestimated if the uniform current is neglected.
The present results have implications for ships sailing across estuarine and coastal environments, where river flows or tidal flows are significant. In these environments, ship waves can be larger than expected and the response of the maximum water level elevation to the ship draft may be more remarkable. The effect of a uniform current should be considered in the analysis of ship waves.
The present study considered only slender-body type ships. For different hull shapes, the effects of a uniform current on characteristic wave parameters need to be further investigated. Moreover, the effects of an oblique uniform current on ship waves need to be examined in future work.
CRediT authorship contribution statement
Congfang Ai: Conceptualization, Methodology, Software, Validation, Writing – original draft, Funding acquisition. Yuxiang Ma: Conceptualization, Methodology, Funding acquisition, Writing – review & editing. Lei Sun: Conceptualization, Methodology. Guohai Dong: Supervision, Funding acquisition.
Declaration of competing interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
Acknowledgments
This research is financially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 52171248, 51720105010, 51979029), LiaoNing Revitalization Talents Program (Grant No. XLYC1807010) and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (Grant No. DUT21LK01).
Appendix. Numerical results with different numbers of horizontal layers
Fig. 18 shows comparisons of the time histories of the free surface elevation at gauge point G1 for Case B and Fr′= 1.2 between the three sets of numerical results with different numbers of horizontal layers. The maximum water level elevations ηmax obtained by Nz= 3 and 4 are 0.24% and 0.35% larger than ηmax with Nz= 2, respectively. Correspondingly, the leading wave periods Tp obtained by Nz= 3 and 4 are 0.45% and 0.55% larger than Tp with Nz= 2, respectively. In general, the three sets of numerical results are very close. To reduce the computational cost, two horizontal layers Nz= 2 were chosen for this study.

Data availability
Data will be made available on request.
References
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