Effect of Wave Height on Maneuverability of Ships in Waves Available to Purchase

This paper presents the application of a direct time-domain solver to simulate the influence of the incident wave height on the maneuvering characteristics of a container ship in waves. A body-exact potential flow model is used to compute the wave loads on the vessel. In the present body – exact scheme, the perturbation free surface boundary conditions are transferred to a representative incident wave surface at each station at each time. The hydrodynamic pressure components are integrated under the intersection surface of the incident wave surface and the exact body position. A strip theory formulation is used, which has been found to be numerically stable, robust and computationally efficient. These are all critical aspects when performing long time maneuvering simulations. The hull maneuvering, rudder and propeller forces are carefully modelled from a systems-based approach, typically used for simulating calm water maneuvers. The computational model is validated using available free-running model test data. The influence of wave characteristics including wave height, frequency and heading on the turning maneuver of a containership is presented.