Reliability assessment of ship powering performance extrapolations using Monte Carlo methods

This paper describes the application of a practical method for uncertainty analysis, in which the uncertainties in all error sources are considered individually and simultaneously in the extrapolation of ship powering prediction. Such uncertainty has been investigated by utilising the JTTCl 978 performance prediction method and an application of Monte Carlo simulations. The error sources are: the torque, thrust, towing force, propeller revolution from the self-propulsion test; the resistance force and the model speed from the resistance test; and the torque and thrust coefficient from the open water test. A case study was conducted using available sea trials and towing tank experimental data of the RTV Bluefin, a research and training vessel owned and operated by the Australian Maritime College (AMC), see Table 1 for main particulars. The levels of uncertainty in ship powering were obtained by choosing a random sample from the error sources and repeating the calculation a large number of times. Then the distributions of the simulation results were used to determine the uncertainty in the total result.