Ship berthing is a complicated manoeuvring process that demands precise control of the speed and course of an underactuated system. As berthing involves low speed running of a ship under environmental disturbances with reduced manoeuvrability, a professional ship handler often faces difficulties in controlling heading in such a situation. To bring automation in ship berthing, most of the researchers have agreed that Artificial Neural Network (ANN) plays a vital role as it has the ability to learn from human experience and replicate similar action in an unknown situation. However, we are still far away from implementing it for real berthing control as we do not have any self-fulfilling ANN controller yet, which can treat all the major issues relevant to a complicated ship berthing operation. Based on contemporary research findings, this paper, therefore, highlights four major challenges that have to be taken into account while proposing an ANN controller for ship berthing, and a comprehensive summary of how to deal with those. The first is how to provide consistent teaching data while training ANN controller to make it more robust; second is how to make the controller universal to do berthing in any port; third is how to tackle the wind disturbances while automation in progress; and the fourth is how to align a ship to the pier, which is the final stage of berthing.
Greenwater (splashing of water on the deck) loading is a classical problem faced by the designer of ship-shaped vessels, which becomes even worst when the vessel operates at harsh weather conditions for an extended period. Installation of breakwaters on the deck can play a crucial role in minimizing this impact. However, research on the design and optimization of the breakwater is still at its infancy, and this study aims at shedding further light on this area by proposing and analyzing the effectiveness of three breakwater designs on a fixed box-shaped vessel. Commercial CFD software is used for this investigation. However, the design model (without breakwater) was validated at first against experimental results of green water splashing, before performing the actual simulations with proposed breakwater design. A vertical plate is used as the deck structure, and greenwater pressure at several locations on that plate is measured to compare the effectiveness of various breakwater designs. Overall, breakwaters with openings (perforations, grillages etc.) found to be more effective in minimizing the pressure generated by the greenwater. Nevertheless, there are significant rooms for improvement on breakwater designs, and some topics for further research are also suggested in this regard.
The exponential growth of population and the consistent food demand has compelled humanity to seek alternatives to traditional farming and innovative technologies to increase production. Exploring offshore for natural resources and alleviating pressure on land has been an ongoing research field, especially in the energy and aquaculture sector. However, the idea of floating farming is still in its infancy and requires significant innovations. The work presented here shed further light on this area by proposing a comprehensive model of ‘Integrated, multicultural, Multileveled Floating Farm (MFF).’ Various aspects of planning, design, constructions and operations of such MFF are discussed. An integrated waste management system is proposed to improve sustainability. The conceptual design and associated financial analysis demonstrated that such integration of various modes of farming could be profitable and sustainable at the same time. The cost estimation and profit analysis are presented in the context of Singapore, and a conservative approach is followed for the calculation. However, the model can easily be extended for application in other countries.
Despite the widespread research and development of HAWTs in recent times, VAWTs are gaining in popularity due to certain critical advantages they provide, for example, wind direction independency. While most existing studies focused on analysing the performance of VAWT using NACA aerofoils, this study compares the performance of NACA0018 and S1046 aerofoil profiles for a range of Speed Ratios (TSRs) and blade pitch angles. It has been found that the S1046 is less sensitive to changes in wind speed, and is thus, a superior choice for urban applications where the wind speed is comparatively low and varies a lot. Three bladed VAWTs of solidity 0.1 was modelled using Solidworks for this study. The CFD simulations were then performed in ANSYS Fluent, utilising the k-ω SST turbulence model. The model was validated at first before analysing the VAWT performance with the intended aerofoils. Key results indicate that increasing the TSR leads to increases in aerodynamic performances for nearly all cases, and especially so, for lower blade pitch angles. However, this study concludes that VAWT consisting of S1046 aerofoils at -2 degrees of blade pitch and operating at TSR 4 will provide the optimum performance.
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