Real-Time Prediction of Ship Interaction Forces Using Simplified Models

Real-Time Ship Maneuvering Simulation Models is becoming more common and necessary in some feasibility analysis of ports and horizontal design. Due to the complexity of the hydrodynamic effects, a fairly realistic modeling is difficult to obtain, so that this type of simulation becomes limited in some cases. Large ships face difficulties to access ports once the shallow water and bank effects become significant. Since these factors are essential in some maneuverability studies, they must be modeled to Real-Time Simulations. In order to increase the application range of this kind of simulation, this paper presents simplified models to estimate additional hydrodynamic forces related to ship-to-ship and ship-to-bank interactions. Based on some physical input data which can be easily obtained during a Real-Time simulation, such as vessel speed and relative distances between a ship and another solid body, applying a set of measured points from the vessel to check the respective environment geometric shapes, identifying the bank conditions and other nearby vessels at a given instant. Thus, we are able to determine a realistic hydrodynamic effect. Due to the difficulty to create an accurate model, the prediction of the hydrodynamic forces was obtained from experimentally validated numerical methods such as the Boundary Elements Method (BEM), using the Rankine Panel Method. This validation consists in a comparative study among other works in this area to ensure a reliable response. The model calibration was performed using dimensionless coefficients and the BEM results are applied to the Real-Time simulation for a vessel type studied. In this study, a modeling of ship-to-ship will be presented modeled to interact in a Real-Time simulator, as a way to improve the real-time simulation and it will show that this method provides more realistic results to studies related to ship-to-ship interaction.