Critical assessment of the seaway conditions of typical container shipping routes and its influence on ship motions in seaways

• Main Author: Yun, Xin Heng
• Other Authors: Liu Shukui
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: Nanyang Technological University 2022
• Subjects: Engineering::Maritime studies::Maritime science and technology
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/163548
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Marine traffic is an important aspect of global trade, and it is estimated that marine traffic accounts of roughly 80% of all good traded by volume. The losses of shipping containers present many risks, namely to the environment, and to shipping routes. In recent years, container ships have been increasing and increasingly bigger; with the so-called Panamax Vessel having gone from 250m in length in the 1980s to now having the “New-Panamax” Vessel being 366m in length. This increase in length is also compounded by an increase in TEU capacity. This study takes two approaches, one in gathering information about container losses at sea in the past 10 years and analysing the route and weather conditions at the time of accident. The other involves simulating the motion of vessels with a fixed displacement but different dimensions to determine how stability in head waves and beam waves are affected by changes in different dimensions. This distortion is done via simple affine distortion to keep the same displacement. Accident data was gathered from public sources and ship AIS data were gathered to provide an overview of the ship’s route, as well as using WAVEWATCH III to gather data on wave activity at the time of the accident. After the hull forms were designed, a python program was written to assist in preparing the forms for simulation in NEWDRIFT V0.7 Results from the simulation show that vessels with wider beams tend to experience higher heave amplitudes in both head and beam waves, but forms with narrow beams experience higher roll amplitudes and; that vessels in head waves tend to have higher pitch amplitudes; leading to dangerous conditions for crew, cargo, and vessel.