Manoeuvring and Seakeeping Tests for 5415M

In this paper, an extensive measurement campaign conducted within the WEAG THALES project will be presented. During this project, free sailing manoeuvring and seakeeping tests were performed using a variant of the DTMB 5415 ship model. The variant is designated 5415M. The aim of the THALES project was to assess the capability of design tools to predict the performance of advanced monohull naval ships. The model tests were conducted to generate validation material for the design tools. At MARIN, the manoeuvrability of the model was investigated for several approach speeds. The results of these tests have already been used in international workshops, such as the SIMMAN 2008 workshop.
For the sea facet of the NATO RTO AVT-161 group, the seakeeping tests for the 5415M have been selected as test case. These tests comprised roll decay tests, forced roll tests and seakeeping tests in regular, bi-chromatic and irregular waves.
With the 5415M, additional captive manoeuvring tests were conducted as well in order to obtain information on the forces and moments on the hull during various manoeuvring conditions. The captive manoeuvring tests comprised conventional steady drift tests, oscillation tests, rudder tests, but also more advanced tests during which the motion of the model was continuously modified. The latter tests were conducted to investigate whether the same manoeuvring coefficients could be obtained using a reduced set of tests.
This paper will provide an overview of the complete test programme and will highlight some of the most interesting results.