Determination of Seakeeping Performance for a Case Study Vessel by the Strip Theory Method

Abstract The increase of seakeeping performance is of particular importance for car and passenger ferries, service ships in the gas and oil extraction industry and offshore wind power farm industry, as well as for special purpose ships (including military applications). In the water areas of the Baltic Sea, North Sea, and Mediterranean Sea, which are characterised by a short and steep wave, the hull shape has a substantial impact on the operational capacity and propulsion efficiency of the ship, as well as on comfort and safety of navigation. The article analyses selected aspects of seakeeping for four variants of a selected case study vessel, indicating practical limitations of the strip method. The analysed aspects included hull heaving and pitching, added resistance, Motion Thickness Indicator (MSI), and Subjective Magnitude (SM). Experimental tests were also performed in the towing tank. Their comparison with the numerical results has indicated high inaccuracy of the strip method. What is more, the simplified representation of hull shape used in the strip method makes it impossible to analyse the effect of hull shape changes on the predicted seakeeping characteristics. Especially for the case of head wave, neglecting highly non-linear phenomena, such as slamming or head wave breaking, in strip method-based computer simulations will significantly decrease the reliability of the obtained results. When using the strip method, the seakeeping analysis should be complemented with model tests in a towing tank, or by another more complex numerical analysis, such as CFD for instance.