Design Options for Dynamic Captive Ship Model Test Facility

Abstract

With increased traffic and operation of ships at sea, it becomes necessary to understand the requirements for the future of safe shipping. In this regard, IMO and other agencies have prescribed standards for surface ship manoeuvring to ensure navigational safety. The performance of surface ships in manoeuvring is estimated numerically and/or experimentally in the early design stage. Present work reviews the experimental methods of estimating manoeuvring characteristics of a ship which includes the conventional captive model tests carried out in the towing tank. Planar Motion Mechanism (PMM) tests are the most popular as they yield both acceleration and velocity dependent derivatives. The paper presents different design concepts of PMM test facility to be installed in the towing tank at IIT Madras. The mechanical and operational details of PMM options, to suit the existing towing tank facility at IIT Madras, will be discussed here in this paper.