A Unified Approach to Estimate Ship Maneuverability and Seakeeping in Regular Waves

Abstract

Aiming to solve the complex ship motions in waves under rudder operation, a six degrees of freedom unified method coupling ship maneuverability and seakeeping is applied. The numerical simulation model and in-house codes OpenWALAS is developed to predict ship maneuverability in calm water and regular waves combining potential flow theory and boundary element method. The nonlinear incident wave forces and hydrostatic restoring forces on ship hulls are calculated through pressure integration on instantaneous wetted surfaces. The second-order wave drift forces are obtained through the far-field method. Based on the unified theory, the seakeeping and maneuvering model is solved in body-fixed coordinate system to predict the ship motion response in calm water and regular waves, by considering rudder forces, wave exciting forces, centrifugal forces and Coriolis forces. Turning simulations of an ONRT naval ship and a KCS container ship with ±35° in calm water and regular waves are presented, including the wave-induced motions and turning trajectories, which are validated by the available experimental data in public literatures. It’s concluded that the present method and novel in-house numerical codes can be applied to predict ship maneuvering behavior in calm water and regular waves with practical accuracy.

Keywords

Unified theory / Maneuverability / Nonlinear motion / Second-order drift force / Ship turning / Regular waves

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Harbin Engineering University and Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature