ENHANCING MARITIME SAFETY: OPTIMIZING FAIRWAY DESIGN THROUGH MULTI-ARC CONFIGURATIONS

Abstract

The growing parameters of ships entail the necessity for port infrastructure which depends mainly on the size of ships and various weather conditions. One of the major problems in marine traffic engineering is to determine the safe parameters of fairways, i.e., safe depth and width at the bottom in bends of the fairway. While examining the velocity component of bends, the helical flow formed by secondary currents was observed. A secondary current occurs due to imbalance between centrifugal forces and pressure gradient at surface. In other words, close to the inner bank and at channel bed, pressure gradient exceeds centrifugal forces and conveys water in transverse direction toward the inner bank. At free surface, centrifugal forces drive flow (secondary current) to the outer bank. The aim of this research is to replace fairway bends that have a single arc with multiple separate arcs to reduce the curvature effect of fairways on ships during manoeuvring. This is achieved by performing CFD methods for fairway bends, with a single arc shape and with multiple separate arcs, under different flow conditions. Multiple arcs will reduce the effect of helical flow with the objective of minimizing grounding risk, loss of steering, or ships collision.