A comparison of experimental and numerical behaviour characteristics of a ship entering a lock using benchmark test data

This paper discusses several papers that were presented at the 3rd International Conference on Ship Manoeuvring in Shallow and Confined Water, which had a non-exclusive focus on Ship Behaviour in Locks. For this conference, experimental model test data obtained at Flanders Hydraulics Research had been made public and researchers were encouraged to compare numerical with experimental results [1]. Data of benchmark tests carried out both with self-propelled and captive models were used by researchers for comparison with various numerical tools. The objective of this paper is to give a selected overview of how accurately numerical tools are presently able to predict the hydrodynamic forces that occur on ships approaching locks. Based on this, the paper concludes that experiments and numerical tools complement each other