Rapid detection to long ship wake in synthetic aperture radar satellite imagery

The maritime administrative department employs synthetic aperture radar (SAR) satellite remote sensing technology to obtain evidence of illegal discharge of ships. If the ship is discharged during navigation, it forms a long dark wake on the SAR image due to the suppression of the Bragg wave by the oil fi lm. This study investigates key techniques for rapid detection of long ship wakes, thereby providing law enforcement agencies with candidate ships for possible discharge. This paper presents a rapid long ship wake detection method that uses satellite imaging parameters and the axial direction of the ship in images to determine the potential detection area of the wake. Then, the threshold of long ship wake detection is determined using statistical analysis, the area is binarized, and isolated points are removed using a morphological filter operator. The method was tested with ENVISAT Synthetic Aperture Radar and GF-3 SAR data, and results showed that the method was eff ective, and the overall accuracy of the decision reaches 71%. We present two innovations;one is a method that draws a Doppler shift curve, and uses the SAR imaging parameters to determine the detection area of the long wake to achieve rapid detection and reduce the image detection area. The other is where a classical linear fitting method is used to quickly and accurately determine whether the detected dark area is a long ship wake and realizes the twisted long ship wake detection caused by the sea surface flow field, which is otherwise diffi cult to detect by the traditional Radon and Hough transform methods. This method has good suppression performance for the dark spot false alarm formed by low speed wind region or upward flow. The method is developed for maritime ship monitoring system and will promote the operational application of maritime ship monitoring system.

Practical Solutions for Reducing Container Ships' Waiting Times at Ports Using Simulation Model

The main challenge for container ports is the planning required for berthing container ships while docked in port.Growth of containerization is creating problems for ports and container terminals as they reach their capacity limits of various resources which increasingly leads to traffic and port congestion.Good planning and management of container terminal operations reduces waiting time for liner ships.Reducing the waiting time improves the terminal’s productivity and decreases the port difficulties.Two important keys to reducing waiting time with berth allocation are determining suitable access channel depths and increasing the number of berths which in this paper are studied and analyzed as practical solutions.Simulation based analysis is the only way to understand how various resources interact with each other and how they are affected in the berthing time of ships.We used the Enterprise Dynamics software to produce simulation models due to the complexity and nature of the problems.We further present case study for berth allocation simulation of the biggest container terminal in Iran and the optimum access channel depth and the number of berths are obtained from simulation results.The results show a significant reduction in the waiting time for container ships and can be useful for major functions in operations and development of container ship terminals.

Optimal Risk-Based Maintenance Planning of Ship Hull Structure

Various structures such as marine structures age over time. In order to always maintain safety conditions, maintenance processes including inspection and repair should be implemented on them. Corrosion and fatigue cracks are two main factors that reduce the ultimate strength of the ship's hull girder over time and thus increase the probability and risk of failure. At the time of inspection,the structural conditions must be checked so that, if necessary, the required repairs can be done on it. The main objective of this paper is to provide optimized maintenance plans of the ship structure based on probabilistic concepts with regard to corrosion and fatigue cracks. Maintenance activities increase the operational costs of ships; therefore, it is advisable to inspect and repair in the optimal times. Optimal maintenance planning of the ship structure can be conducted by formulating and solving a multi-objective optimization problem. The use of risk as a structural performance indicator has become more common in recent years. The objective functions of the optimization problem include minimizing the structure's lifecycle maintenance costs, including inspection and repair costs, and also minimizing the maximum risk of structural failure during the ship's life. In the following,to achieve better responses, reliability index has been added to the problem as the third objective function. The multi-objective optimization problem is solved using genetic algorithms. The proposed risk-based approach is applied to the hull structure of a tanker ship.

Optimization Parameter of Transformation of Parallel Translation for Ship Pitch Simulation

The transformation of parallel translation can improve the smoothness of discrete series sometimes. In this paper, for ship pitch, a method to modify the system error is proposed via the transformation of parallel translation, which can give the optimize parameters using the Method of Minimum Squares. The series in the method can fit white exponential law better, and then be applied in GM (1,1) very well. The numerical experiments imply that the method is practical, which make the ship pitch system model more accurate than GM ( 1,1 ).

Spatial Pattern and Heterogeneity of Port & Shipping Service Enterprises in the Yangtze River Delta,2002–2016

Using the ‘theoretical hypothesis—empirical study—case verification' method, this paper studies the spatial distribution and differentiation of port & shipping service enterprises(PSSE), as well as the variation process and underlying mechanism in the Yangtze River Delta(YRD). First, through inductive and deductive reasoning, we propose the following hypothesis: the regional distribution of different types of PSSE would show different spatial agglomeration-decentralization tendency; and there would be distinct regional differentiation in the industrial structure of the enterprises. Second, based on data obtained from enterprises, empirical research is conducted using Gini coefficient and spatial interpolation simulation methods. Results show that: 1) The overall enterprise distribution is decentralized within a city. 2) Different types of enterprises show different spatial agglomeration-decentralization tendencies. At 3000 m×3000 m grid scale, there is an agglomeration tendency along seas and rivers in the spatial distribution of enterprises. Shanghai has been identified consistently as a hot spot. 3) There is significant regional differentiation in 12 port cities with respect to the industrial structures of enterprises. Finally, the transportization and the increase of shipping service demand, the globalization and the expansion of multinational corporate activities, the hierarchization and the cooperation among port cities as well as the decentralization and the behavioral difference between the central and local states can be seen as main driving mechanism of the spatial phenomenon.

Real-time Monitoring of Subsea Gas Pipelines,Offshore Platforms,and Ship Inspection Scores Using an Automatic Identification System

The aim of this research is to develop an algorithm and application that can perform real-time monitoring of the safety operation of offshore platforms and subsea gas pipelines as well as determine the need for ship inspection using data obtained from automatic identification system(AIS).The research also focuses on the integration of shipping database,AIS data,and others to develop a prototype for designing a real-time monitoring system of offshore platforms and pipelines.A simple concept is used in the development of this prototype,which is achieved by using an overlaying map that outlines the coordinates of the offshore platform and subsea gas pipeline with the ship’s coordinates(longitude/latitude)as detected by AIS.Using such information,we can then build an early warning system(EWS)relayed through short message service(SMS),email,or other means when the ship enters the restricted and exclusion zone of platforms and pipelines.The ship inspection system is developed by combining several attributes.Then,decision analysis software is employed to prioritize the vessel’s four attributes,including ship age,ship type,classification,and flag state.Results show that the EWS can increase the safety level of offshore platforms and pipelines,as well as the efficient use of patrol boats in monitoring the safety of the facilities.Meanwhile,ship inspection enables the port to prioritize the ship to be inspected in accordance with the priority ranking inspection score.

Port and Shipping Express Management: The Challenges Faced by West and Central Africa in This Century

Shipping industry has become more capital intensive, technically more demanding and subject to major global regulatory reforms. As a consequence, the number of African shipping lines has been severely reduced. International trade of the WCA countries remains weak, limited to 30% of their Gross Domestic Product (GDP). The goal of this paper is to provide a comprehensive overview of the port and shipping convey management in the WCA region, and of course to describe what has been achieved since then and what still have to be done to better its infrastructures and port community.

River bank protection from ship-induced waves and river flow

A new equation is proposed for the design of armor units on protected river banks under the combined action of ship-induced waves and river flow.Existing observed field and experimental data in the literature have been examined and a valuable database has been developed.Different conditions,including the river water depth,flow velocity,river bank slope,Froude number,wave height,wave period,and wave obliquity have been considered.Results from an empirical equation (Bhowmik,1978) that only considers the maximum wave height and river bank slope have been compared with the results calculated by the newly developed equation.Calculated results have also been verified against field data.Results show that not only the maximum wave height and river bank slope but also the water depth,flow velocity,wave length,wave obliquity,and wave period are important parameters for predicting the mean diameter of the armor units,highlighting the multivariate behavior of protecting the river bank in the presence of ship-induced waves and river flow velocity.

Fuzzy Optimal Control Design for Ship Steering

This paper presents a method to design a control scheme for nonlinear systems using fuzzy optimal control.In the design process,the nonlinear system is first converted into local subsystems using sector non linearity approach of Takagi Sugeno(T S)fuzzy modeling.For each local subsystem,an optimal control is designed.Then,the parameters of local controllers are defuzzified to construct a global optimal controller.To prove the effectiveness of this control scheme,simulations are performed using the mathematical model of Esso Osaka tanker ship for set point regulation with and without disturbance and reference tracking.In addition,the simulation results are compared with that of a PID controller for further verification and validation.It has been shown that the proposed optimal controller can be used for the nonlinear ship steering with good rise time,zero steady state error and fast settling time.

Study and Analysis of Obstacles and Challenges Facing Ship-Repair Industry in Iran

Nowadays, shipping industry which is the backbone of economic development has affiliated to ship maintenance and repair industry. This industry provides technical maintenance services to ships in a way to enable them to meet the requirements and regulations of the International Maritime Organization and maintaining the vessels at high technical standard & continual seaworthiness condition. Maintaining the minimum requirement of classification societies on the ships is solely taken place with repairs. The research method is an applied study in sake of aim and a descriptive study in sake of nature. This research has been conducted to examine causes and factors contributed to failures repairing in dry docks in the country;using the obtained results, an approach has been presented to reduce obstacles existing in country and reach to standard international levels. The problems include lack of suitable strategy, lack of government support, governmental facet of the structure of this sector, cumbersome laws, customs problems, lack of specialized workshops, low levels of technology and lack of new technology etc. Thus, by taking amendment to the cumbersome rules, taking advantage of industry and modern technology experts, increasing productivity and competitiveness, centralizing active domestic and foreign workshops at private sector, facilitating timely supply of parts and accessories, using research and development sector, increasing quality, reducing costs and repair time, selecting secure industrial- trade partner and etc. can pave the way in this context.

Crashworthiness assessment of thin-walled double bottom tanker: A variety of ship grounding incidents

This study addresses the issue of ship accidental grounding as an impact phenomenon,with the assumption that an interaction of its structure with the oceanic seabed(obstruction),idealized as rock topology,is capable of initiating a so-called hard ground scenario.This occurrence variation was considered by performing two main instances,encompassing raking and stranding,often experienced by oil/chemical tankers as thin-walled structures.In addition,a failure criterion was implemented on the structural geometry,in order to define its ultimate limit and possible damage,during interaction with the obstructions.Subsequently,the analysis results were compiled to assess structural crashworthiness as well as progressive failure of the double bottom part of the tanker,where energy criterion indicated the raking to be more destructive.Meanwhile,detailed observation of the failure sequence indicated the stranding to have successfully breached the inner bottom shell.

CFD Analysis of Ship-to-Ship Hydrodynamic Interaction

A numerical study of ship-to-ship interaction forces is performed using a commercial CFD code,and the results are compared with experimental data and with the results of a panel method analysis.Two ship models have been used in the interaction forces analysis:a tug and a tanker,advancing parallel to each other with different lateral distances and two different values of the fluid depth.Computations are carried out with four different flow models:inviscid and viscous flow with the free surface modeled as a rigid wall and inviscid and viscous flow with the deformable free surface.A fair agreement was obtained with available experimental data and results obtained by panel method.The influence of viscosity in the computations is found to be comparatively weak,while the wavemaking effects may be important,at small magnitude of the horizontal clearance.

A Novel Ship Wake Detection Algorithm Based on WTHT and Radon Transform

This paper proposes a novel ship wake detection algorithm based on the White Top-hat Transform(WTHT)and the Radon transform,which aims to improve the contrast between the ship wake and the background so as to improve the detection performance on Synthetic Aperture Radar(SAR)images.The proposed algorithm includes two major processes,and one is to improve the contrast and another one is to locate the ship wake.In high sea state conditions,the contrast of ship wake and background can be very low,which makes it difficult to detect.In the first step,the proposed contrast improvement algorithm is applied to improving the contrast which helps for improving the detection performance.An attribute filter based on edge detection result is adopted here.In the second step the contrast improved image is transformed into the Radon domain followed by peak extraction process to find the wake,the WTHT is used once more in this step.Finally,in the last step,the wake is overlapped on the original image.Experimental results on Tiangong-2 Interferometric Imaging Radar Altimeter(InIRA)images are presented and compared with that obtained by using the classical algorithm,and in this way,the better performance of our algorithm is demonstrated.

Developing and Applying a Ship Operation Energy Efficiency Evaluation Index Using SEEMP: a Case Study of South Korea

The CO2 emission reduction policy of the International Maritime Organization(IMO)recommends that the operation of ships,managed by maritime transport companies,should be energy-efficient.An evaluation method that can determine how successfully a ship implements the energy efficiency plan is proposed in this study.To develop this method,the measures required for energy-efficient ship operations according to the Ship Energy Efficiency Management Plan(SEEMP)operational guidelines were selected.The weights of the selected measures,which indicate how they contribute to the energy-efficient operation of a ship,were derived using a survey based on the analytic hierarchy process(AHP)method.Consequently,using these measures and their weights,a new evaluation method was proposed.This evaluation method was applied to shipping companies in South Korea,and their ship operation energy efficiency indices were derived and compared.This evaluation method will be useful to the government and shipping companies in assessing the energy efficiency of ship operations.

Decoding RoPax Ship Capsizes and Development of an ISO Ship Safety Standard

Marine accidents often result in significant losses of human life, environmental damage, and property destruction. Additionally, ships and offshore plants are large-scale and complex systems, making safety assessments challenging. However, the advent of onboard electronic systems has made it possible to monitor and respond more effectively. These new technologies can enhance safety levels while reducing the workload on crews. In this paper, authors analyze recent accidents involving ships with high structures above the water, such as car carriers or RoPax vessels, and propose preventive safety indicators to help prevent similar accidents from recurring.

Sloshing-Coupled Ship Motion Algorithm for Estimation of Slosh-Induced Pressures

The effect of coupling between sloshing and ship motions in the evaluation of slosh-induced interior pressures is studied. The coupling between sloshing loads and ship motions is modelled through a hybrid algorithm which combines a potential flow solution based on transient Green function for the external ship hydrodynamics with a viscous flow solution based on a multiphase interface capturing volume of fluid(VOF) technique for the interior sloshing motion. The coupled algorithm accounts for full nonlinear slosh forces while the external forces on the hull are determined through a blended scheme of linear radiationdiffraction with nonlinear Froude-Krylov and restoring forces. Consideration of this level of nonlinearities in ship motions is found to have non-negligible effects on the slosh-coupled responses and slosh-induced loads. A scheme is devised to evaluate the statistical measure of the pressures through long-duration simulation studies in extreme irregular waves. It is found that coupling significantly influences the tank interior pressures, and the differences in the pressures between coupled and uncoupled cases can be as much as 100% or more. To determine the RAO over the frequency range needed for the simulation studies in irregular waves, two alternative schemes are proposed, both of which require far less computational time compared to the conventional method of finding RAO at each frequency, and the merits of these are discussed.

The Applicability of Hydrofoils as a Ship Control Device

Centrifugal forces are commonly created when ships turn, which may cause a ship to capsize in a critical situation. A mathematical model has been developed to optimize the stability coefficients for ship, with the aim to prevent capsizing and to increase ship maneuverability in high-speed water craft. This model can be used to develop algorithms for control system improvement. The mathematical model presented in this paper optimized the use of multipurpose hydrofoils to reduce heeling and the trimming moment, maintaining an upright ship’s position and lessening the resistance via transverse force. Conventionally, the trimming and heeling of a ship are controlled using ballast water;however, under variable sea conditions it is sometimes difficult to control a ship’s motion using ballast water. In this case, a hydrofoil would be more stable and maneuverable than a ballast tank controlled vessel. A movable hydrofoil could theoretically be adapted from moveable aerofoil technology. This study proves the merit of further investigation into this possibility.

Enhancing the observing capacity for the surface ocean by the use of Volunteer Observing Ship

Knowledge of the surface ocean dynamics and the underlying controlling mechanisms is critical to understand the natural variability of the ocean and to predict its future response to climate change.In this paper,we highlight the potential use of Volunteer Observing Ship(VOS),as carrier for automatic underway measuring system and as platform for sample collection,to enhance the observing capacity for the surface ocean.We review the concept,history,present status and future development of the VOS-based in situ surface ocean observation.The successes of various VOS projects demonstrate that,along with the rapid advancing sensor techniques,VOS is able to improve the temporal resolution and spatial coverage of the surface ocean observation in a highly cost-effective manner.A sustained and efficient marine monitoring system in the future should integrate the advantages of various observing platforms including VOS.

Capsizing Probability of Dead Ship Stability in Beam Wind and Wave for Damaged Ship

The International Maritime Organization has developed the second-generation intact stability criteria. Thus, damage stability criteria can be established in the future. In order to identity the capsizing probability of damaged ship under dead ship condition, this paper investigates two methods that can be used to research the capsizing probability in time domain, which mainly focus on the nonlinear righting lever GZ curve solution. One method subjects the influence of damaged tanks on the hull shape down to the wind and wave, and the other method is consistent with the real-time calculation of the GZ curve. On the basis of one degree of freedom rolling equation, the solution is Monte Carlo method, and a damaged fishery bureau vessel is taken as a sample ship. In addition, the results of the time-domain capsizing probability under different loading conditions are compared and analyzed. The relation of GM and heeling angle with the capsizing probability is investigated, and its possible reason is analyzed. On the basis of combining the time-domain flooding process with the capsizing probability calculation, this research aims to lay the foundation for the study of capsizing probability in time domain under dead ship condition, as well as provide technical support for capsizing mechanism of dead ship stability and damage stability criteria establishment in waves.

Ships Bottom Cavities as Shock Absorbers in Waves

Bottom ventilated cavitation is the successfully proven ship drag reduction technology,but the impact of sea waves on ships with bottom cavities is the substantial concern for a broad technology implementation.The influence of waves on vertical force experienced by such ships is analyzed in this paper using a perturbation technique.The unperturbed cavity shape at given Froude number and cavity length was found from a nonlinear steady ideal fluid problem.The ship response to an impact of a wave of the given length and amplitude is considered as the one-frequency perturbation.This perturbation was found by combined consideration of compressible flow in the cavity and incompressible flow in the surrounding water.Computational examples relate to an earlier tested model with the bottom cavity restricted by skegs.The vertical forces on the model with bottom cavities and in cavitation-free conditions were compared in head and following seas.It was found that within the major part of the consider range of wavelengths the cavity acts as a shock absorber significantly reducing the vertical force pulsation and ship acceleration in waves.