Passing Ship Effects at Typical Waterfronts

This study explores passing ship effects on a floating pier and its client ships in typical waterfront environments. The flow induced by passing ships and the associated forces were traced with a Chimera, Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) based viscous flow solver. A parametric analysis was conducted to observe the nature of passing ship effects in a restricted waterway and quantify the influences of site specifics to the passing ship effects. The results indicate that the passing ship effects retain much of its nature in unrestricted water. However, water depth at the pier site, ship layouts, and large-scale seabed geographical features may moderately modify the intensity of the effects in extremely shallow waters. Parametric models should be used with care as they do not normally account for the influences of site specifics. Evidences are illustrated in terms of excitation forces on the moored ships.