Control of ship roll using passive and active anti-roll tanks

Abstract

We numerically studied the full (six degrees of freedom) motion of a cargo ship without roll stabilizers in rough (sea state 5) conditions for multiple heading angles ranging from 0° (follower seas) to 180° (head seas). We found that the ship exhibits excessive roll motion in quartering (45° off the stern), beam, and head seas. Therefore, roll damping is critical in these conditions. We then investigated the performance of passive and active anti-roll tank (ART) systems and compared their performance in each of the three sea conditions. Each ART consists of three identical tanks, distributed along the centerline of the ship, each of which consists of two vertical ducts connected at the bottom with a horizontal duct. A pump is located at the middle of the horizontal duct of each tank. The pumps are switched on for active ARTs but switched off for passive ones. The loads (forces and moments) exerted on the ship by the ARTs are added to the hydrodynamic loads (e.g., due to pressure and viscous effects) and the thrust in the governing equations of motion of the ship. Whereas both passive and active ARTs are able to reduce the excessive roll motion, active ARTs outperform the passive ones from three perspectives. First, they are more effective in reducing the roll motion. Second, they require much less working liquid. Third, their performance is insensitive to their natural frequencies and, hence, to their geometric design. In addition, we found that head seas are most responsive to ARTs, which suggests that they are effective in mitigating parametric roll.