It is usual practice to ballast a sip to maintain requires operational safety at sea. However, excessive ballasting may reduce the operational economy of a ship. Therefore, The determination of the optimal location and quantity of ballast water is one of the important works at the preliminary design stage. To provide a convenient tool to ship designers the program for the determination of the optimal location and program the effect of the change of ballast water quantity in each tank on some characteristics of a ship, such as trim, initial stability and heel, is investigated and the minimum quantity of ballast water for each tank which satisfies the operational safety requirements is calculated.