Ship manoeuvring in shallow water with ship-bank interaction effects

This paper presents the evaluation on ship manoeuvring of a Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) ship in shallow water with ship-bank interaction effects. The ship has an open stern-form with buttock flow line and a wide central skeg. A series of model experiments to measure the hull hydrodynamic forces/moments and ship-bank interaction forces/moments acting on the ship were conducted in shallow water using a Planar Motion Mechanism (PMM). The model experiments data have been presented in non-dimensional form for both the hydrodynamic coefficients and ship-bank interactions effects. A time domain simulation program has been developed to obtain the ship manoeuvring behaviour in shallow water with ship-bank interaction effects using experimentally derived coefficients. In the evaluation, the ship manoeuvring trajectories for three conditions have been simulated namely; with and without bank effect and differing sizes of rudder area. They were conducted with symmetrical bank contours. The time domain simulations show that the ship-bank interaction effects and rudder size have significant effect on the manoeuvring capability of the ship.