Comparison of a Simplified Vessel Response Estimation With a State of the Art Vessel Response Prediction Computer Tool
Within ship design it is of great importance to predict the vessels movement while at sea so the designer can ensure safety and comfort of passengers and crew. In early stages of the design process, where main dimensions are not yet set, it is useful to have a qualified estimate of what the vessel behavior will be. In 2004 Jensen et.al proposed a series of closed form expressions to calculate the wave induced motions for a monohull ship. Jensen’s formulas were based on a semi analytical approach and the input data is restricted to main dimensions together with forward speed and heading. The main idea behind a simplified vessel response estimate is to be able to make qualified evaluations of a vessel’s hydrodynamic characteristics at an early stage in the design process. Recently, several applications have been developed based on Jensen’s method. An independent comparison of the method was therefore sought after, in order to increase the understanding of the accuracy level of the simplified method. In this paper we compare the ship motion estimated with Jensen’s simplified method with the vessel prediction from a state-of-the-art linear hydrodynamic vessel prediction module in ShipX. J.J. Jensen’s simplified method delivers significant differences in response amplitude and resonance range. While more general trends seem to be well captured. The differences originate mainly from Jensen’s assumptions about constant added mass, the definition of the damping coefficient and that the ship is considered box-shaped. These differences give that the simplified method is not suitable as a tool for detail design of ships, but more suitable as support during concept development of ship designs.