COMPUTATION OF SHIP INTERACTION FORCES IN RESTRICTED WATERS

Theoretical and computational results are presented for the interactio n forces among multiple ships or bodies which are operating near to ea ch other. These computations are made under several assumptions, the m ost important of which is that the free surface is rigid. An assumptio n usually made in the analysis of this problem is that the ships are s lender, but the approach taken here is fully three-dimensional. The me thod is applicable to any number of arbitrarily shaped bodies in arbit rary motion in a fluid domain which may be bounded by irregular surfac es. Results are presented for the simple case of two ships passing in a canal of rectangular cross section, for which a particular Green fun ction greatly reduces the computational effort; and for two ships pass ing in a canal with sloping sides, for which no such economies are ava ilable.