Planar Motion Mechanism Test of the Mobile Harbor Running in Design Speed in Circulating Water Channel

Abstract

Mobile Harbor (MH) is a new transportation platform that can load and unload containers onto and from very large container ships at sea. It could navigate near harbors where several vessels run, or it could navigate through very narrow channels. In the conceptual design phase when the candidate design changes frequently according to the various performance requirements, it is very expensive and time-consuming to carry out model tests using a large model in a large towing tank and a free-running model test in a large maneuvering basin. In this paper, a new Planar Motion Mechanism(PMM) test in a Circulating Water Channel (CWC) was conducted in order to determine the hydrodynamic coefficients of the MH. To do this, PMM devices including three-component load cells and inertia tare device were designed and manufactured, and various tests of the MH such as static drift test, pure sway test, pure yaw test, and drift-and-yaw combined test were carried out. Using those coefficients, course-keeping stability was analyzed. In addition, the PMM tests results carried out for the same KCS (KRISO container ship) were compared with our results in order to confirm the test validity.