Considerations on the squat of unevenly trimmed ships

In existing publications about empirical studies of ship squat trim is only dealt with implicitly by focussing the concern on the maximum squat. This restriction is only sufficient if a non-zero static trim is always increased dynamically, which, however, turns out to be wrong. Instead of maximum squat, we suggest a more suitable definition of the quantity relevant for under-keel clearance. In an example, it is shown that a non-zero static trim can actually be reduced dynamically, indicating a possible optimisation of trim. For a correct estimation of the squat effect on under-keel clearance, trim must be treated as an explicit parameter. Our arguments are based on full-scale experiments as well as results from numerical simulations.