Computation of Ship Interaction Forces in Restricted Waters

Theoretical and computational results are presented for the interaction forces among multiple ships or bodies which are operating near to each other. These computations are made under several assumptions, the most important of which is that the free surface is rigid. An assumption usually made in the analysis of this problem is that the ships are slender, but the approach taken here is fully three-dimensional. The method is applicable to any number of arbitrarily shaped bodies in arbitrary motion in a fluid domain which may be bounded by irregular surfaces. Results are presented for the simple case of two ships passing in a canal of rectangular cross section, for which a particular Green function greatly reduced the computational effort; and for two ships passing in a canal with sloping sides, for which no such economies are available.