Determination of Hydrodynamic Masses and Roll Periods of Ships in Shallow Water

Due to the fast increase of the vessels’ size over the past few years the actual water depth is becoming more and more relevant for seakeeping problems. The highly frequented sea route TSS Terschelling – German Bight for example is a shallow water route for large vessels which are now affected by the reduced keel clearance. Many shallow water depth areas occur also in coastal areas or inland seas. If a vessel is travelling in shallow water sea states, the hydrodynamic forces will change compared to deep water sea states and they are essential for further seaway calculations. Furthermore, a rough but easy evaluation of the incoming seaway is the roll period. Shallow water effects should be taken into account for calculating roll periods and thereby predicting a manageable or risky seaway situation. This paper presents the implementation of shallow water effects into an existing 2D panel code. With this panel code the hydrodynamic forces for the vessel’s frames are calculated based on the potential theory in the frequency domain, which is a validated approach in the early design stage. The panel code is part of the ship design environment E4 which is being developed by the Institute of Ship Design and Ship Safety, among others. With the expanded method it is possible to calculate hydrodynamic forces also in shallow water in all degrees of freedom. Therefore, the frame motions are converted to global ship motions. Furthermore, for the usage in the early design stage the calculations should be fast but also accurate. The obtained calculation results are therefore validated with full scale measurement using Inertial-Measurement-Units.