Tuning of transfer functions for analysis of wave–ship interactions

Transfer functions are often used together with a wave spectrum for analysis of wave–ship interactions, where one application addresses the prediction of wave-induced motions or other types of global responses. This paper presents a simple and practical method which can be used to tune the transfer function of such responses to facilitate improved prediction capability. The input to the method consists of a measured response, i.e. time series sequences from a given sensor, the 2D wave spectrum characterising the seaway in which the measurements are taken, and an initial estimate of the transfer function for the response in study. The paper presents results obtained using data from an in-service container ship. The 2D wave spectra are taken from the ERA5 database, while the transfer function is computed by a simple closed-form expression. The paper shows that the application of the tuned transfer function leads to predictions which are significantly improved compared to using the transfer function without tuning.