Objectives  With the development of international shipping, ports and waterways are becoming increasingly crowded. Study on stopping ability of large ships is crucial to their voyage safety.

  Methods  The naoe-FOAM-SJTU solver based on the CFD platform OpenFOAM and the ship 6-DOF motion and multi-level object with propeller motion solver module and the overset grid technology are used to numerically simulate the emergency stopping maneuver of KVLCC2 model with propeller. First, the rotation speed of propeller is controlled to achieve the steady self-propulsion state of the ship model; then the propeller is reversed at a moment speed to achieve the emergency stopping maneuver. By generally solving viscous flow field, the motion state and detailed flow field information of the ship model during self-propulsion and stopping maneuver are presented, the cause of reverse effect is analyzed, and the numerical prediction results are compared with the test data.

  Results  The results indicate that the discrepancy between numerical prediction results and test data is within 5% and that it is possible to numerically predict the reverse and stopping maneuver problems by using the naoe-FOAM-SJTU solver.

  Conclusions  The method adopted herein can provide reference for preliminary design and maneuver method of a ship in terms of ship stopping issues.