Application of an offline grey box method for predicting the manoeuvring performance

The prediction of manoeuvring performance for safe navigation and effective design of ships increasingly depends on artificial intelligence (AI), mainly digital twin technology. This technology requires a digital model of the physical ship. The hydrodynamic coefficients and parameters of these models are commonly obtained through two experimental methods: the planar motion mechanism (PMM) and the circular motion test (CMT). These methods are time-consuming and expensive, which may not be feasible during the early stages of the design process. This study investigates a cost-effective alternative approach to these methods by implementing a grey box method on ships. For the first of these implementations, a full-scale tanker ship was applied with artificial training data of zigzag manoeuvres. A validation study was carried out by comparing the simulation and free-running model test results of the tanker. For the second of these implementations, a scale model of a car carrier was selected, and several numerical search methods were combined to obtain a more accurate digital model. The 3-degree-of-freedom (DOF) Manoeuvring Modelling Group (MMG) models identified through this combination were validated with simulations and compared with the free-running model test results for various manoeuvres. The contribution of this study lies in the accurate capture of the manoeuvring characteristics of the physical model, which is achieved through the use of the adjustment interval and the combination of various numerical search method of the grey box method. Consequently, the developed model can be used in future studies as a faster decision-making tool for determining the straight-line stability or instability of a ship in the ship design and in predicting the manoeuvring performance of the ship.