A numerical study of the second-order wave excitation of ship springing by a higher-order boundary element method

Abstract

This paper presents some of the efforts by the authors towards numerical prediction of springing of ships. A time-domain Higher Order Boundary Element Method (HOBEM) based on cubic shape function is first presented to solve a complete second-order problem in terms of wave steepness and ship motions in a consistent manner. In order to avoid high order derivatives on the body surfaces, e.g. mj-terms, a new formulation of the Boundary Value Problem in a body-fixed coordinate system has been proposed instead of traditional formulation in inertial coordinate system. The local steady flow effects on the unsteady waves are taken into account. Double-body flow is used as the basis flow which is an appropriate approximation for ships with moderate forward speed. This numerical model was used to estimate the complete second order wave excitation of springing of a displacement ship at constant forward speeds.