Optimal meteorological ship routeing¹

Article type: Research Article

Authors: de Wit, C.

Affiliations: Department of General Sciences, Delft University of Technology

Note: [1] Report No. 142 S Netherlands Ship Research Centre TNO, Delft.

Abstract: The author of this report was assigned to investigate the mathematical aspects of meteorological ship routeing by Prof. Dr. R. Timman of the Delft University of Technology. The assignment was accomplished in 1968, resulting in a doctor’s thesis, entitled “Mathematical Treatment of Optimal Ocean Ship Routeing” [1]. This report describes the outlines of this dissertation. The first section contains the problem statement as well as some notational conventions. In order to avoid metric difficulties, the navigated region G is to be mapped conformally onto a plane, keeping the scale alteration as small as possible. Section 2 gives a curse treatment of the most important mappings that fit this purpose. In the 3rd section the minimal time problem is discussed as an application of Pontryagin’s optimal control theory. The concept of a timefront is introduced and some attention is given to possible structure complications of these fronts. Also modifications of the general theory, in the event that part of a trajectory should coincide with the boundary of the region G, are briefly mentioned. Section 4 cursely treats wave prediction methods and the determination of a ship’s behaviour in sea waves. In the 5th section the computer program to evaluate the least time track is described and the results of a practical application are exhibited. The consequences of data incertainties and the practical use of the treated method are briefly discussed. The two appendices contain mathematical treatments of the general minimal time problem and of the minimal time problem with co-ordinate restrictions.

DOI: 10.3233/ISP-1971-1820502

Journal: International Shipbuilding Progress, vol. 18, no. 205, pp. 334-356, 1971