Heave-excited rolling motion of a rectangular vessel in head seas

Abstract

A two-degree-of-freedom nonlinear numerical model is developed to simulate the heave-excited rolling motion of a vessel. The geometrical concepts and global analysis methods of nonlinear dynamics are applied to gain some insights of the behavior of ship rolling. Parametric resonance, jump and bifurcations of the types of fold, period-doubling and pitchfork are observed to occur in the Poincare mapping of the simulated rolling motions. Chaotic motions are also predicted by the numerical model.