//SYS21///INTEGRA/BST/VOL2/REVISES 31-7-2001/BSTC12.3D ± 475 ± [473±538/66] 30.7.

2001 3:50PM

Seakeeping 475

As with so many other aspects of ship design a rigorous treatment of sea-

keeping is very complex and a number of simplifying assumptions are usually
made. For instance, the ship is usually regarded as responding to the waves as
a rigid body when assessing motions and wetness although its true nature as
an elastic body must be taken into account in a study of structure. In the same
way it is instructive, although not correct, to study initially the response
of a ship to regular long-crested waves ignoring the interactions between
motions, e.g. when the ship is heaving the disturbing forces will generate a
pitching motion. This very simple approach is now dealt with before considering
coupled motions.

Ship motions
It was seen in Chapter 4, that a ¯oating body has six degrees of freedom. To
completely de®ne the ship motion it is necessary to consider movements in all
these modes as illustrated in Fig. 12.1. The motions are de®ned as movements
of the centre of gravity of the ship and rotations about a set of orthogonal axes
through the c.g. These are space axes moving with the mean forward speed of
the ship but otherwise ®xed in space.

Fig. 12.1 Ship motions

It will be noted that roll and pitch are the dynamic equivalents of heel and
trim. Translations along the x- and y-axis and rotation about the z-axis lead to no
residual force or moment, provided displacement remains constant, as the ship
is in neutral equilibrium. For the other translation and rotations, movement