Seakeeping and manoeuvring for wind assisted ships

Research on Wind Assisted Ship Propulsion (WASP) has until now focussed on performance in steady conditions whereas unsteady behaviour is an important part of ship behaviour. For “conventional” manoeuvring and seakeeping, performing direct “free running” scale model tests has been successful to gain understanding and to improve ship designs. In the “WindLab” project the opportunity was taken to extend that approach to aerodynamics: modelling real wind with a simplified wind tunnel in the basin. A unique set-up was tested for its suitability and first data was collected on the performance of wind assisted ships in unsteady scenarios.