Biofouling represents an important problem in the shipping industry since it causes the increase in surface roughness. The most of ships in the current world fleet do not have good coating condition which represents an important problem due to strict rules regarding ship energy efficiency. Therefore, the importance of the control and management of the hull and propeller fouling is highlighted by the International Maritime Organization and the maintenance schedule optimization became valuable energy saving measure. For adequate implementation of this measure, the accurate prediction of the effects of biofouling on the hydrodynamic characteristics is required. Although computational fluid dynamics approach, based on the modified wall function approach, has imposed itself as one of the most promising tools for this prediction, it requires significant computational time. However, during the maintenance schedule optimization, it is important to rapidly predict the effect of biofouling on the ship hydrodynamic performance. In this paper, the effect of biofilm on the ship hydrodynamic performance is studied using the proposed performance prediction method for three merchant ships. The applicability of this method in the assessment of the effect of biofilm on the ship hydrodynamic performance is demonstrated by comparison of the obtained results using the proposed performance prediction method and computational fluid dynamics approach. The comparison has shown that the highest relative deviation is lower than 4.2% for all propulsion characteristics, lower than 1.5% for propeller rotation rate and lower than 5.2% for delivered power. Thus, a practical tool for the estimation of the effect of biofouling with lower fouling severity on the ship hydrodynamic performance is developed.

生物污损是航运业中的一个重要问题，因为它会引起表面粗糙度的增加。当前世界船队中的大多数船舶都没有良好的涂层条件，这是一个严格的有关船舶能效的规定，这是一个重要的问题。因此，国际海事组织强调了船体和螺旋桨结垢的控制和管理的重要性，并且优化维护计划成为了重要的节能措施。为了适当地执行该措施，需要准确预测生物污染对水动力特性的影响。尽管基于修改后的壁函数方法的计算流体动力学方法已将自身强加为进行此预测的最有前途的工具之一，它需要大量的计算时间。但是，在优化维护计划期间，重要的是快速预测生物污染对船舶流体动力性能的影响。本文使用拟议的三艘商船性能预测方法研究了生物膜对船舶水动力性能的影响。通过使用拟议的性能预测方法和计算流体动力学方法比较所获得的结果，证明了该方法在评估生物膜对船舶水动力性能影响方面的适用性。比较表明，所有推进特性的最高相对偏差均低于4.2％，螺旋桨转速的最高相对偏差低于1.5％，输出功率的最高相对偏差低于5.2％。因此，