First-principles algorithms for ship motion simulation based on ARMA and trochoidal wave models

An approach for the direct simulation of ship behavior in heavy sea conditions using modern computers methods is described. The approach includes a model for wind-driven waves, algorithms for hydrodynamic pressure calculation, a solution of the diffraction problem, and the integration of the approach into a problem solution environment. An ARMA (autoregressive-moving average) model is used for the simulation of a hydrodynamically adequate spatial-temporal wave surface and integrated with a calculation of hydrodynamic pressure at any point under the wave surface. The integration of the wave pressure over the ship hull and the solution of the diffraction problem provides the excitation forces and moments and permits direct numerical simulation of ship motions in waves. An effective numerical implementation of the algorithms with mapping to modern computer architecture is described. The combination of the numerical algorithms with a visual simulation environment is presented as a virtual testbed. •An approach to simulation of ship behavior in heavy seas based first-principles is described.•It includes a mathematical model for waves, hydrodynamic pressures, and solving the diffraction problem.•Auto-regression and moving-average model (ARMA) is used for simulation of hydrodynamic adequate wave surface.•Numerical implementation of these algorithms for high-performance computing is described.