Assessment of shiphandling difficulty for an approach channel of a harbor

Abstract

When planning or designing an approach channel of a harbor, multiple plans of its layout are usually prepared and reviewed from various viewpoints. One of the important viewpoints to be considered is shiphandlers' viewpoint, that is, shiphandling difficulty depending on the layout of approach channel. This difficulty may be mainly due to the geographical layout characteristics of approach channel and environmental conditions around the own ship. In this paper, basic process for the quantitative assessment of shiphandling difficulty felt by a crew who controls a ship along an approach channel of a harbor is suggested. For this assessment, fast time simulation technique has been used and the results have been statistically analyzed to estimate the quantitative shiphandling difficulty. Sample assessment results are shown for some approach channels of Korean harbors. By using this technique, it becomes possible to quantitatively discriminate the various plans of approach channel layout from shiphandlers' viewpoint. This method can also be applied to the comparison of shiphandling difficulty of approach channels for different harbors, which can help fairway designers have engineering insight for its relative shiphandling difficulty.