Graduation internship: Analyzing Viscous Damping in Moored Ships

Graduation internship: Analyzing Viscous Damping in Moored Ships

Safe mooring of ships at quay walls has become increasingly more challenging. Large container ships, car carriers, and cruise ships have a significant side wind area, and the combination of bollards located at the quay edge and high mooring deck levels make that short, steep lines can often not be avoided. This results in unsafe mooring situations where high line tensions could occur. Ultimately, this increases the risk of slipping winches, snapping lines, or even overloading bollards.

As a consultant for port authorities and terminal operators, Haskoning analyses the behaviour of various mooring configurations in ports with scientific models developed by MARIN. We provide valuable numerical insight into the behaviour of moored ships and find possibilities to ensure safer mooring. Haskoning has contributed to the new PIANC Guidelines: Mooring of large ships at quay walls, which addresses the mooring safety of ships at quay walls.

When a ship is moored in close proximity to another object such as a quay wall or revetment, interaction effects play a significant role in the prediction of the motions and mooring loads. Not only will high water velocities occur between both bodies, but also shallow water conditions at low under keel clearances affect mooring responses. The complexity is increased by the fact that both effects will interact as well. These viscous effects can be incorporated in our numerical models, but currently, there is insufficient understanding of this phenomenon. This may lead to under- or overly conservative results.

What you do as an intern in our team?

The purpose of this graduation is to quantitatively analyse the effect of viscous damping on vessel motion and mooring line forces by means of model tests at TU Delft. These model tests will need to be designed and executed by the student in the (small) towing tank at the faculty of ME. For simplification, it is anticipated to represent the container ship by a rectangular box. The main focus of this thesis is understanding how viscous damping depends on the underkeel clearance at the berth and the gap between quay and ship based on physical model tests. Similar tests have been done by MARIN in the past with an LNG carrier next to a gravity-based structure, see De Boer & Buchner (2005): Viscous Damping of Vessels Moored in Close Proximity of Another Object.

What you bring as a graduate intern

If you are an enthusiastic master student in maritime technology with a passion for ship motions, this might be the MSc thesis for you. We expect that you know your dynamics, you understand flow and viscous damping, and that you want to understand more about the behaviour of moored ships or structures in close proximity to a quay wall and the seabed. You have a passion for both numerical and physical modelling and while reading this, you have become curious about how you would model this particular problem. You are creative and you bring ideas to the table on how to model this not only accurately but also practically, not only in numerical models but more importantly, also in the towing tank.

Where you will work

Royal HaskoningDHV is a global company with over 6,000 staff in 140 countries and is active in engineering & design and consultancy. We strive to have a positive impact on people and their environment and on the global economy through the projects we do.

You will become part of the Advisory Group Maritime & Renewables the Netherlands. This team consists of around 180 colleagues and is based in the Netherlands across three offices (Delft, Amersfoort, and Nijmegen). As a team, we excel in a wide variety of services and skills in the fields of Climate Resilience and Maritime developments. We provide our clients, both private and (semi)governmental, with a range of services throughout the various phases of a project: from inception, through master planning, feasibility, design all the way to construction supervision. We have a strong foothold in the Netherlands but we operate worldwide.

What we offer you

At Haskoning, we boast over 20 years of expertise in Dynamic Mooring Analysis (DMA). By joining our team, you'll quickly gain in-depth knowledge of mooring analysis within port engineering. You'll have the opportunity to work with advanced engineering software developed by MARIN (DIFFRAC | MARIN, aNySIM XMF | MARIN), integral to our mooring analyses. Our dedicated DMA workflow includes cloud computing, as well as pre- and post-processing.

Our new office in Delft, opening on May 6th, is conveniently located next to the TU Delft campus. This allows you to easily balance your time between the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering and our office on Mijnbouwstraat. Here, you'll have the chance to work at an international engineering consultancy firm specializing in port consultancy.

In addition, you get an internship compensation of €550,- per month for a full-time internship.