NUMERICAL SIMULATION OF SHIP NAVIGATION IN ROUGH SEAS BASED ON ECMWF DATA

Recently, several changes have been observed in the Earth’s environment. This is also applicable to the ocean environment. The concept of weather routing has been applied for ship navigation for a long time. Many service providers offer weather routing service with the availability of high-quality satellite data. Unfortunately, not much information is available in the public domain as to how much the recent change in the weather pattern has affected ship navigation. The purpose of this paper is to fill this information gap. We investigate the influence of recent changes in the ocean environment on ship navigation. Weather data from ECMWF, namely ERA-Interim, is used for this purpose. The ECMWF data for the last 27 years is analysed. We compute the statistical characteristics of this data for the first 10 years, last 10 years, and 27 years. The statistical characteristics of the data are determined based on “summer” and “winter” zones as defined by international maritime regulations. Six different worldwide commercial ship routes are selected covering all the ocean regions. Navigation on great ellipse with waypoint is considered. MMG type ship manoeuvring model for 3 different ship types (DTMB 5415, PCC, VLCC) is used. The added resistance due to wave, wind and the effort of keeping the ship on the desired course using autopilot in the rough ocean environment is included in the MMG model. The fuel consumption and the duration of each one of the voyage are computed. Based on the analysis and simulation results it is shown that: (i) The mean wave height, wave period, and wind speed has increased in some ocean zones and decreased in other ocean zones. If any change has occurred, it is uniform for both seasons (summer and winter). (ii) In which ocean regions there is a perceptible change in fuel consumption, average ship speed and voyage time due to the changes in the weather pattern. (iii) The changing weather pattern in different ocean zones affects each ship type differently