Wave-making resistance
energy required to push the water out of the way of the hull, which creates the associated waves
Wave-making resistance or wave resistance is a form of drag that affects any object moving on a surface of a fluid, such as boats and ships moving on the surface of water, and reflects the energy required to push the water out of the way of that body. For example, the hull of a moving watercraft creates waves (a wake) which carry energy away and resist the motion of the watercraft. Wave resistance is only one of the components of the total resistance or drag experienced by a body moving on a surface of a fluid, others being viscous drag and pressure drag.
Physics background
For small displacement hulls, such as sailboats or rowboats, wave-making resistance is the major source of the marine vessel drag.
A salient property of water waves is dispersiveness; i.e., the greater the wavelength, the faster it moves. Waves generated by a ship are affected by her geometry and speed, and most of the energy given by the ship for making waves is transferred to water through the bow and stern parts. Simply speaking, these two wave systems, i.e., bow and stern waves, interact with each other, and the resulting waves are responsible for the resistance. If the resulting wave is large, it carries much energy away from the ship, delivering it to the shore or wherever else the wave ends up or just dissipating it in the water, and that energy must be supplied by the ship's propulsion (or momentum), so that the ship experiences it as drag. Conversely, if the resulting wave is small, the drag experienced is small.
The amount and direction (additive or subtractive) of the interference depends upon the phase difference between the bow and stern waves (which have the same wavelength and phase speed), and that is a function of the length of the ship at the waterline.
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