Stability of Periodic Orbits and Bifurcation Analysis of Ship Roll Oscillations in Regular Sea Waves

Response, stability, and bifurcation of roll oscillations of a biased ship under regular sea waves are investigated. The primary and subharmonic response branches are traced in the frequency domain employing the Incremental Harmonic Balance (IHB) method with a pseudo-arc-length continuation approach. The stability of periodic responses and bifurcation points are determined by monitoring the eigenvalues of the Floquet transition matrix. The primary and higher-order subharmonic responses experience a cascade of period-doubling bifurcations, eventually culminating in chaotic responses detected by numerical integration (NI) of the equation of motion. Bifurcation diagrams are obtained through the period-doubling route to chaos. Solutions are aided with phase portrait, Poincaré map, time history and Fourier spectrum for better clarity as and when required. Finally, the same ship model is investigated under variable excitation moments that may result from different wave heights in regular seas. The biased ship roll model exhibits primary and subharmonic responses, jump phenomena, coexistence of multiple responses, and chaotically modulated motion. The stable, periodic, and steady-state roll responses obtained by the IHB method are validated by the NI method. Results obtained by both methods are found to agree very well.