MANOEUVRING

Steering and manoeuvring is about the

behaviour of a ship in a horizontal plane. It is
the response of the ship’s motion as a result
of rudder action. This course will handle
manoeuvring aspects in a more general way
since certain aspects are still not fully
understood. The basic dynamics of
manoeuvring and course keeping can be
described and analysed using Newtons Laws
of Motion. Basic operations in the horizontal
plane can be considered first with reference
to one set of axes fixed relative to the earth
and a second set fixed relative to the ship.
FORCES ACTING ON A VESSEL DURING MANOEUVRE

The forces and movements are built up of four types

of forces that act on a ship during manoeuvre:
a) Hydrodynamic forces acting on the hull and
appendages, due to ship velocity and acceleration,
rudder deflection and propeller rotation.
b) Inertial reaction forces caused by ship
acceleration.
c) Environmental forces due to wind, waves and
currents.
d) External forces such as tugs or thrusters.
 The first two types of forces generally act in the
horizontal plane and involve only surge, sway and
yaw responses, although rolling may occur.

Hydrodynamic forces are due to hull velocity

through water (damping force) and those arising
from hull acceleration (added mass forces).
There are several plausible scenarios in ships
manoeuvoring. These could be:
Shallow water effects – quite complex.
Interactions between vessels complicate the
hydrodynamic and inertial force analysis.
Environment where wind, wave and current are
prevalent may also complicate things:
Current can be incorporated in hydrodynamic forces
by considering the relative velocities between the
vessel and the water.
Forces and moments due to wind are time
dependent and generally proportional to the above
water area of the ship on square of the relation
velocity between ship and wind. May be affected
due to direction of wind velocity relative to the ship
axes.
Two distinct types of wave forces act. First
order forces are important from sea keeping
point of view. But the steady slowly varying
forces due to second order wave drift effects
are generally more important for ship
controllability.
Wave drift forces depend primarily on ship’s
length, relative magnitude of wavelength and
amplitude.
Finally the forces created by tugs and thrusters
are effective at relatively slow speeds and
mostly external to hydronamic manoeuvre and
TURNING PATH OF A SHIP
All ship manoeuvres involve turning. The
response of a ship to deflection of the rudder
and the resulting forces and movements can
be divided into two groups:
a) An initial transient one in which significant
surge, sway and yaw accelerations occur.
b) A steady turning position in which rate of
turn and forward speed are constant and path
of the ship is circular (in the absence of
significant external force).
Suppose a ship is advancing in a straight line
path when its rudder is deflected and held at a
fixed angle. The resulting path of the ship can
be divided into three distinct phases.
First phase starts at the instant of rudder
deflection and may be complete by the time
the rudder is held steady at a specified angle.