Preliminary Study of Ship Maneuvering Prediction of Container Ship

Abstract

Abstract Ship maneuvering is defined as the inherent capability of a vessel to turn its path based on the hydrodynamics principles. The maneuvering performance becomes important to the safety of navigation when a ship operates. In case of vessel turning motion, International Maritime Organization (IMO) requires the maximum tactical diameter is five times of the ship lengths. Tactical diameter is the distance travelled by the ship’s center of gravity in a parallel direction to the ship’s initial path. In this paper, semi-empirical approach proposed by Clarke (1983) was used to obtain the first derivative of hydrodynamics equation. After that, the maneuvering performance was calculated using Son and Nomoto’s mathematical model (1981). Based on IMO regulations, the calculation of tactical diameter was conducted with 35° of rudder position. The calculation and analysis of tactical diameter was carried out according to relevant procedure of the ship maneuvering provided by IMO. The calculation result shows satisfactory result based on IMO regulations. The maximum tactical diameter does not exceed the requirements of IMO maneuvering standards. A further investigation was performed to see whether there was any impact on ship’s main dimensions to the maneuverability performance. In the future study, the development of open source software program to analyze the ship maneuvering performance is considered. It is expected to be able to contribute for facilitating in the preliminary ship design process.