An overview of the prediction methods for roll damping of ships

Of all the six degrees of freedom, the roll motion of a ship is the most poorly understood and displays complicated phenomena. Due to the low potential wave damping at the natural frequency, the effective analysis of ship roll dynamics comes down to the accurate estimation of the viscous roll damping. This paper provides overview of the importance of roll damping and an extensive literature review of the various viscous roll damping prediction methods applied by researchers over the years. The paper also discusses in detail the current state of the art estimation of viscous roll damping for ship shaped structures. A computer code is developed based on this method and its results are compared with experimental data to demonstrate the accuracy of the method. While some of the key references describing this method are not available in English, some others have been found to contain typographic errors. The objective of this paper is to provide a comprehensive summary of the state of the art method in one place for future reference.