The influence of some ship parameters on manoeuvrability studied at the design stage

Collision and grounding are the most common accidents in ship operation. Some accidents are due to human failure, but several research projects have shown that a high percentage of these accidents could have been avoided if the ship have had better manoeuvrability characteristics. This paper describes how, when the shipyard select some important ship parameters and dimensions at the design stage, these set of parameters influence manoeuvrability characteristics. To obtain these effects, some IMO manoeuvres have been numerically simulated for a sample ship and a non-linear numerical model proposed by the authors to study ship manoeuvrability is described in this work. The day to day practice of a shipyard where fast modelisation and calculations are required, and modifications to the original design are quite common at the preliminary design stage, requires fast but accurate numerical models.