The advantage of ship to ship transfer, especially when berthing of VLCC
and ULCC is difficult, is cost effectiveness. However, such operations are
associated with safety risks such as hull damages, personnel safety risks and
pollution due to operation accidents. Therefore, it is imperative to understand the
nature and effects of the environmental factors especially involving sea waves
during ship-to-ship operations.
Two major aims are outlined in this dissertation: to understand how the gap
distance between the ships influences the dependent variables such as wave
elevation and to further scrutinise the hydrodynamic interactions regarding this
phenomenon. Numerical simulation is firstly done to verify the Airy wave model at
wave amplitude 1.05m and period 5s. However, wave pattern unexpectedly exhibit
nonlinear characteristics such as sharp crests and flat troughs. This is followed by a
ship to ship numerical study with conditions similar to Xu et al. (2014) numerical
study at gap widths of 3m, 6m and 12m with 5 equal distance data points at the gap
region. The results then show that narrower gap width correlates strongly with
larger wave elevations and smaller periods. Velocity vectors and pressure contours
from the numerical study also show higher values during gap resonance motion.
Next, to establish a local baseline for the findings, Li et al. (2016) barge to barge
numerical study is replicated. It is observed that the wave elevation values from this
replicated study agrees poorly with what was found in Li et al. (2016) study where
replicated study show a lower trend than the original. All numerical computations in
this dissertation are done using ASPIRE1 HPC with 168 core processors.Master of Science (Mechanical Engineering
