Challenges to Ship Hydrodynamics in the XXI Century

The beginning of twenty-first century is characterized with important changes in world shipping and exploitation of ocean resources. Three important trends are clearly visible: environment protection, safety and economy. They materialize in important changes in the structure of world fleet where some existing ship types are going to disappear and new ship types emerge. Increasing the size of some ship types is another visible tendency. Stress on environment protection has serious impact on the hydrodynamic characteristics of ships whether with regard to safety zero accident rate is the goal. Important challenges to ship hydrodynamics caused by those tendencies are discussed in the paper.