Manoeuvring assessment in concept ship design

The art of ship design is to find the best design compromise suitable for the ship's task and its operations, taking the performance, initial costs and running costs into consideration. Decisive design compromises are made in the early conceptual design phase, but the impact of these decisions on the mission of the ship is not always fully understood. Consequently all issues, constructive and hydrodynamical, governing the ship design, should be assessed in this initial design phase. Hydrodynamic concept design is often based rather on experience than thorough evaluation. For design optimisations and new concept development a thorough hydrodynamic assessment is required to evaluate the applicability of for example the hull design or different propulsion arrangements related to the mission and operational requirements of the ship.
This paper is focussed on manoeuvring evaluations based on numerical predictions within the framework of conceptual ship design. The methodology how to incorporate hydrodynamic conceptual design in the ship design strategy is discussed and further developments are highlighted. Manoeuvring evaluations and simulations are to be based on real life operations rather than only on the conventional IMO A.751 (18) manoeuvring criteria. Methods to assess the validity of numerical manoeuvring prediction tools are presented based on the application of new fully automated benchmark software. Recently implemented applications, such as podded propulsion are presented and the benefits relating to the conceptual design phase are demonstrated based on examples.