5.

Seakeeping

5.81 CONTENTS

1. Introduction 2. Measure of sea keeping ability 3. Ship motions 4. Factors affecting sea keeping 5. Sea keeping criteria 6. Overall sea keeping performance 7. Improving Sea keeping Performance 8. Stabilization 9. Summary

INTRODUCTION
Seakeeping ability is a measure of how well-suited a watercraft is to conditions when underway. A ship has good sea keeping ability is said to be very seaworthy and is able to operate effectively even in high sea states. In their broadest sense the terms sea keeping and seaworthiness cover all those features of a vessel which influence its ability to remain at sea in all conditions, for which it has been designed, and carry out its intended mission. They should, therefore, embrace stability, strength, maneuverability and endurance as well as the motions of the ship and related phenomena. In this chapter only those aspects of a ships performance directly attributable to the action of the waves are considered. Other aspects are discussed in later chapters. Considered as a rigid body, a ship has six degrees of freedom. They are the three rotations of roll (or heel ), pitching (or trim) and yaw, together with the three translations of heave, surge and sway. For a stable ship the motions of roll, pitch and heave are oscillatory and these are the three motions dealt with here. The other three degrees of freedom will be excited in a seaway but are of lesser importance. As the ship is flexible other degrees of freedom will be excited but these are dealt with under strength and vibration.

Measure of seakeeping ability

Mission: what the ship is intended to accomplish. The role of the ship while at sea. Environment: the conditions under which the ship is operating. This can be described as sea state, wind speed, geographic region or some combination thereof. Ship responses: the response of the ship to the environmental conditions. The responses are a function of the environment and the vessel characteristics. Sea keeping performance criteria: the established limits for the ship's responses. These are based on the ship motions and the accelerations experienced, and include comfort criteria such as noise, vibration and Sea sickness a, performance based values such as involuntary speed reduction, and observable phenomena such as bow immersion. Clearly, a drillship and a ferry have different missions and operate in different environments. The performance criteria will be different as well. Both may be considered seaworthy, although for different reasons based on different criteria.

SHIP MOTIONS

Translation
Heave: is the linear vertical (up/down) motion Sway: is the linear lateral (side-to-side)motion Surge: is the linear longitudinal (front/back) motion Rotation motions ]Roll : is the rotation of a vessel about its longitudinal (front/back) axis Pitch : is the rotation of a vessel about its transverse (side-to-side) axis Yaw: is the rotation of a vessel about its vertical axis

Factors affecting seakeeping.

Size: A larger ship will generally have lower motions than a smaller one. This is because the relative size of the waves is lower.

Displacement: A heavier ship will generally have lower motions than a lighter one. Given that the wave energy is the same for each vessel and provides the exciting force, the one with the greater mass will have the lower accelerations.

Stability: A stable ship will tend to follow the wave profile closer than a less stable one. This means that a more stable ship will generally have higher accelerations but lower amplitudes of motion.

Freeboard: The greater a vessel's freeboard the less likely it is to immerse the deck. Deck immersion is often a sea keeping criterion, as it affects mission capability in a number of ships.

Human factor: Often the most critical factors in sea keeping especially in small vessels are the experience and skills of the crew in extreme situations. Allied to these are avoiding seasickness, getting sufficient sleep, food and drink and staying injury free for the duration of an extreme event.

Seakeeping criteria
Slamming
Slamming is the impact of the bottom structure of a ship onto the sea surface. It is mainly observed while sailing in waves, when the bow raises from the water and subsequently impacts on it. Slamming induces extremely high loads to ship structures and is taken under consideration when designing ships. Slamming is a high frequency transient vibration in response to the impact of waves on the hull, occurring at irregular intervals. The most vulnerable area is the ships outer bottom between about 10 and 25 per cent of the length from the bow. The impact may cause physical damage and can accelerate fatigue failure in this area. For this reason this area of the outer bottom should be given special attention during survey. Slamming is relatively local and often in a big ship, those on a bridge well aft may not be aware of its severity. Because the duration of the slam is only of the order of of a second, it does not perceptibly modify the bodily motion of the ship but the ensuing vibration can last for 30 seconds. A prudent master will reduce speed when slamming badly. This speed reduction leads to less severe slamming or avoids it altogether. Often a change of direction helps. Lightly loaded cargo ships are particularly liable to slam with their relatively full form and shallow draught forward, and enforced speed reductions may be as high as 40 per cent. Slamming is less likely in high speed ships because of their finer form. Slamming is likely when the relative velocity between the hull and water surface is large and when the bow is re-entering the water with a significant length of bottom roughly parallel to the sea surface. It is amplified if the bottom has a low rise of floor. The pressure acting in a slam can be shown to be proportional to the square of the velocity of impact and inversely proportional to the square of the tangent of the deadrise angle.

Wetness
By wetness is meant the shipping of heavy spray or green seas over the ship. The bow area is the region most likely to be affected and is assumed in what follows. It may limit a ships speed and the designer needs some way of assessing the conditions under which it will occur and how severe it will be. To some degree wetness is subjective and it certainly depends upon the wind speed and direction as well as the wave system. In the past it was often studied by running models in waves but it is now usually assessed by calculating the relative motion of the bow and the local sea surface. The assumption made is that the probability of deck wetness is the same as that of the relative motion exceeding the local freeboard. The greater the difference, the wetter the ship is likely to be. Direct model study of such phenomena can, of course, be made by running the model in a representative wave train over a longish period although spray does not scale accurately. Tests in regular waves can assist in a simple slamming investigation in which two designs are directly compared. It is now usual to assess slamming by calculating the relative motion of the bow and the local sea surface. The assumption made is that the probability of deck wetness is the same as that of the relative motion exceeding the local freeboard. The greater the difference, the wetter the ship is likely to be. Increased freeboard, say by increasing sheer forward is one means of reducing wetness. At sea the master can reduce wetness by reducing speed and, usually, changing the ships heading relative to the predominant waves. Good round down on the deck will help clear water quickly. A bulwark can be used to increase the effective freeboard but in that case adequate freeing ports are needed to prevent water becoming trapped on the deck. The size of freeing ports to be fitted is laid down in international regulations. The designer would avoid siting other than very robust equipment in the area where green seas are likely. Any vents would face aft and water traps provided.

Propeller emergence
The probability of the propeller emerging from the water, as the result of ship motions, can be assessed in a similar way to wetness. That is, by calculating the motion of the ship aft relative to the local sea surface. If the propeller does emerge, even partially, it will be less effective in driving the ship. It will tend to race and cause more vibration.

Human performance It is a common experience that ship motions can cause nausea and then sickness. This discomfort can itself make people less efficient and make them less willing to work. Motions can make tasks physically more difficult to accomplish. Thus the movement of weights around the ship, say when replenishing a warship at sea, is made more difficult. Also tasks requiring careful alignment of two elements may become impossible without some mechanical aid. Over and above this the motions, and the drugs taken to alleviate the symptoms of motion sickness, may adversely affect a persons mental dexterity.

In broad terms the effects of motion on human behaviour depend upon the acceleration experienced and its period. The effect is most marked at frequencies between about 0.15 to 0.2 Hz. The designer can help by locating important activities in areas of lesser motion, by aligning the operator position with the ships principal axes, providing an external visual frame of reference and providing good air quality free of odors.

OVERALL SEAKEEPING PERFORMANCE

The most common cause of large amplitude rolling, as shown by linear theory, is the closeness of the wave encounter frequency to the ships natural roll frequency. Large roll angles can also be experienced due to the fact that a ships effective metacentric height varies as it passes through waves. These are non-linear effects. One case is when waves are slowly overtaking a ship with largish water plane area aft (for instance ships with a transom stern). Relatively large transverse stability variations can occur and roll angles of 40 degrees amplitude, or more, can rapidly build up. Secondly severe rolling can occur when the dominant encounter frequency is close to half the natural period of roll. An overall assessment of sea keeping performance is difficult because of the many different sea conditions a ship may meet and the different responses that may limit the ships ability to carry out its function. A number of authorities have tried to obtain a single figure of merit but this is difficult. The approach is to take the ships typical operating pattern over a period long enough to cover all significant activities. From this is deduced:

(1) The probability of meeting various sea conditions, using statistics on wave conditions in various areas of the world (2) The ship speed and direction in these seas. (3) The probability of the ship being in various conditions, deep or light load.

Improving Seakeeping Performance

Siting critical activities in less-affected areas of the ship. Placing helicopter operations aft in frigates and placing only very rugged equipment forward on the forecastle. rerouting of ships to avoid the worst sea conditions. providing local stabilization for certain equipments such as radder. Skeg for straight line stability

STABILIZATION
A ships rolling motions can be reduced by fitting a stabilization system. In principle pitch motions can be improved in the same way but in practice this is very difficult. An exception is the fitting of some form of pitch stabilizer between the two hulls of a catamaran which is relatively shorter than a conventional displacement ship. In this section attention is focused on roll stabilization. The systems may be passive or active.

Bilge keels
Of the passive systems, bilge keels are the most popular and are fitted to the great majority of ships. They are effectively plates projecting from the turn of bilge and extending over the middle half to two-thirds of the ships length. To avoid damage they do not normally protrude beyond the ships side or keel lines, but they need to penetrate the boundary layer around the hull. They cause a body of water to move with the ship and create turbulence thus dampening the motion and causing an increase in period and reduction in amplitude.

Although relatively small in dimension the bilge keels have large levers about the rolling axis and the forces on them produce a large moment opposing the rolling. They can produce a reduction in roll amplitude of more than a third. Their effect is generally enhanced by ahead speed. They are aligned with the flow of water past the hull in still water to reduce their drag in that state. When the ship is rolling the drag will increase and slow the ship a little.

Passive tanks
These use the movement of water in specially designed tanks to oppose the rolling motion. The tank is U-shaped and water moves from one side to the other and then back as the ship inclines first one way and then the other. Because of the throttling effect of the relatively narrow lower limb of the U joining the two sides of the tank, the movement of water can be made to lag behind the ship movements. By adjusting the throttling, that is by tuning the tank, a lag approaching 90 can be achieved. Unfortunately the tank can only be tuned for one frequency of motion. This is chosen to be the ships natural period of roll as this is the period at which really large motions can occur. The tank will stabilize the ship at zero speed but the effect of the tanks free surface on stability must be allowed for.

Active fins
This is the most common of the active systems. One or more pairs of stabilizing fins are fitted. They are caused to move by an actuating system in response to signals based on a gyroscopic measurement of roll motions. They are relatively small although projecting out further than the bilge keels. The whole fin may move or one part may be fixed and the after section move. A flap on the trailing edge may be used to enhance the lift force generated. The fins may permanently protrude from the bilge or may, at the expense of some complication, be retractable,

The lift force on the fin is proportional to the square of the ships speed. At low speed they will have little effect although the control system can adjust the amplitude of the fin movement to take account of speed, using larger fin angles at low speed.

Active tanks
This is similar in principle to the passive tank system but the movement of water is controlled by pumps or by the air pressure above the water surface. The tanks either side of the ship may be connected by a lower limb or two separate tanks can be used. Figure shows a system in

which the air pressure above the water on the two sides is controlled to tune the system. The air duct contains valves operated by a roll sensing device. The system can be tuned for more than one frequency. As with the passive system it can stabilize at zero ship speed. It does not require any projections outside the hull. The capacity of the stabilization system is usually quoted in terms of the steady heel angle it can produce with the ship underway in still water. This is then checked during trials. It is possible to use modern theories to specify performance in waves but this would be difficult to check contractually

SUMMARY
It has been shown that a ships motions in irregular ocean waves can be synthesized from its motions in regular waves. The energy spectrum has been shown to be a powerful tool in the study of motions as it was in the study of waves. Factors limiting a ships sea keeping capabilities, including the degradation of human performance, have been discussed and it has been seen how they can be combined to give an overall assessment of the probability that a ship will be able to undertake its intended mission. Means of limiting motions by stabilization have been outlined. It has only been possible to deal with the subject in an elementary way.

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