- Lengthening, Manoeuvrability, Shallow water
This task aims at establishing the effect of lengthening inland vessels on the manoeuvrability, including shallow water effects.
To determine the manoeuvring characteristics, standard zig-zag, combined turning circle / pull-out, evasive manoeuvres and crash stop simulations were conducted, considering the lengthening of typical inland vessels as reference (Hendrik and Rheinland), at different water depths and approach speeds.
The simulations were performed with SurSim, this is a program which simulates manoeuvring in the time domain. The typical output is a time trace of positions, angles, propulsion and rudder data. Based on the results of these simulations, trend of the effect of lengthening the inland vessels on the manoeuvrability, including shallow water effects, are depicted.
Based on the manoeuvring simulations, it could be concluded that the manoeuvring performances in terms of turning ability, directional stability, yaw checking ability, initial turning ability and stopping ability are not drastically affected by the lengthening of the vessel and therefore no practical measures should be needed. In the evasive manoeuvre simulations, the manoeuvring performances for Hendrik vessel are affected by the combination of lengthening of the vessel and shallow water effects: improvements on the rudder dimensions and characteristics can probably solve this issue.