Ocean Engineering 32 (2005) 11611173

www.elsevier.com/locate/oceaneng

Effect of criteria on seakeeping

performance assessment
Kadir Sarioz*, Ebru Narli
Faculty of Naval Architecture and Ocean Engineering, Istanbul Technical University,
Maslak 34469, Istanbul, Turkey
Received 9 April 2004; accepted 8 December 2004
Available online 25 February 2005

Abstract
The overall performance of ships depends on the seakeeping performance in specified sea areas
where the vessel is designed to operate. The seakeeping performance procedure is based upon the
probability of exceeding specified ship motions in a sea environment particular to the vessels
mission. Given the operational area of the vessel, the percentage of time the vessel operates in a
particular sea state can be determined from an oceanographic database through application of the
response amplitude operators. The predicted motions are compared to the motion limiting criteria to
obtain the operability indices. However, the operability indices are strongly affected by the chosen
limiting criteria. This is particularly the case for passenger vessels where many conflicting criteria
are used to assess the effect of motions and accelerations on comfort and well-being of passengers.
This paper investigates the effect of seakeeping criteria on seakeeping performance assessment for
passenger vessels. Conventional seakeeping performance measures are evaluated for various levels
of vertical accelerations defined by the ISO 2631 standard. It is shown that the estimated seakeeping
performance of a passenger vessel greatly depends on the level of limiting value selected as the
seakeeping criteria.
q 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Seakeeping; Seakeeping criteria; Motion sickness; Habitability

* Corresponding author. Tel.: C90 212 285 63 96; fax: C90 212 285 65 08.
E-mail addresses: sarioz@itu.edu.tr (K. Sarioz), narli@itu.edu.tr (E. Narli).

0029-8018/$ - see front matter q 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.oceaneng.2004.12.006

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1. Introduction
Most passenger vessels are designed to operate in an environment which can be hostile
due to winds and waves. Regardless of the type or size of these vessels, the well-being of
passengers will be degraded by the adverse effects of the environment. Therefore, the
technological success of passenger vessels hinges upon a good seakeeping design. It
should be the objective of the designer to minimise this degradation and ensure that the
safety of passengers on board is achieved.
The seakeeping performance of a passenger ship can be defined in terms of the average
fraction of time that the actual motions and accelerations are below specified levels
(habitability). An improvement in habitability will obviously improve the well being and
safety of both the passengers and crew on board.
The assessment of seakeeping performance of a passenger vessel in a specified sea
environment is related to four factors:
the wave response characteristics of the ship which depends on the size, dimensions,
form, and weight distribution characteristics
the nature of the sea environment
the ships speed and heading which determine how the ship will encounter the
environment, and
the quantitative and qualitative requirements for the well being and safety of passengers
and crew on board, i.e. the seakeeping criteria
The way these components interact will determine the habitability of the vessel.
It is now common practice to predict the seakeeping responses of a new design in
specified sea areas by using 2D or 3D analytical methods and a wide range of seakeeping
software are commercially available. The main difficulty in seakeeping performance
assessment is, generally, to determine the magnitude of seakeeping responses which will
cause degradation of performance.
Operational consequences of seakeeping performance for a passenger vessel are closely
related to vertical and lateral accelerations. The effect of vertical accelerations on humans
is well understood and has been incorporated into International Standard ISO (1985,
1997). The standard provides severe discomfort boundaries for motion sickness as a
function of acceleration level, the frequency of acceleration, and the duration of exposure
to the acceleration.
Besides the international standard, other measures could also be employed. These
measures include motion sickness incidence (MSI) parameter (OHanlon and McCauley,
1974) which reports the percentage number of people who will become motion sick at a
given acceleration level, frequency, and duration of exposure, and motion induced
interruptions (MIIs) (Graham, 1990) which represent the number of loss-of-balance events
which occur during an arbitrary deck operation.
In order to illustrate the effect of chosen seakeeping criteria on seakeeping performance
assessment, a 50-m motoryacht is considered. Main particulars and body plan of the vessel
are presented in Table 1 and Fig. 1, respectively.

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Table 1
Main particulars of the vessel
Length overall (LOA)
Length between perpendiculars (LBP)
Beam (B)
Draught (T)
Displacement (D)
Block coefficient (CB)
Midship section coefficient (CM)
Prismatic coefficient (CP)
Waterplane area coefficient (CWP)
Longitudinal centre of buoyancy (LCB)
Design speed

49.90 m
43.10 m
9.75 m
2.75 m
558.1 t
0.485
0.696
0.697
0.821
5.5%L (aft)
17 knots

The presentation of paper begins with an overview of seakeeping performance

assessment procedure. This procedure is first used to predict seakeeping responses of the
vessel in specified sea states. The habitability in each state is then estimated for a range of
acceleration levels described by the international standard as the threshold value for
varying levels of discomfort. For each acceleration level, the habitability is evaluated for a
range of forward speed and wave headings. The effect of selected acceleration levels on
seakeeping performance is described as a function of the habitability index.

2. Seakeeping performance assessment

The assessment of a marine vehicles seakeeping performance is based on the character
of its oscillations in the sea states it is expected to encounter during its operating life. Fig. 2
illustrates an overview of the seakeeping performance assessment procedure. The
procedure starts with prediction of the hydrodynamic response characteristics of the vessel
for a range of speed and heading values. The magnitude of the motions in seas of varying

Fig. 1. Body plan of the vessel.

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Fig. 2. Overview of the seakeeping performance assessment procedure.

severity can then be predicted, utilising wave spectra representative of the selected
operational sea area. Finally, the habitability of the vessel can be estimated, based on the
probability of ship motions remaining within acceptable limits.
The steps required to complete such analysis are described in the following sections.

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2.1. Ship response characteristics

The first step in the assessment of seakeeping performance is usually to determine the
motion response amplitudes and phases in the frequency domain for all six degrees of
freedom. Response Amplitude Operators (RAOs) are then computed for each critical
mode of motion, i.e. angular motion or translation of any point on the vessel, in terms of
displacement, velocity or acceleration. The RAOs define the amplitude of the response due
to a unit wave excitation.
Heave, pitch and roll require particular mention because they are three motions with
hydrostatic restoring and therefore possess natural response periods and the potential for
resonance behaviour. For a passenger vessel vertical and lateral accelerations are of main
concern due to the effect of accelerations on the comfort and well being of the passengers.
Fig. 3 shows typical vertical acceleration transfer functions in head seas as a function of
wave frequency and forward speed.
2.2. Definition of the seaway
The regular waves are seldom found in nature and hence the RAOs are of little
consequence on their own. The natural seaway in which a ship operates can only be
described by means of a statistical model. The spectrum or spectral density function is the
primary device used for representing the seaway and the oscillatory response of the vessel
to the seaway.
The wave characteristics of an area must be known in terms of the distribution of wave
energy with respect to frequency and direction, as well as the severity of seas as indicated

Fig. 3. Vertical acceleration RAOs (in passenger saloon) in head seas.

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Fig. 4. One parameter representation of spectral density distribution.

by the wave height probability distributions. The wave energy distribution within various
wave height bands can be represented through the use of a wave spectral family. In Fig. 4
spectral density functions are presented as a function of wave frequency and sea state,
based on the one parameter PiersonMoskowitz formulation.
2.3. Prediction of responses in a specified seaway
The short-term response trends obtained by superposition of the vessel RAOs with the
wave spectral family describe the mean steady-state response amplitudes for seas of
varying severity, as well as the standard deviation about the mean due to variations in
spectral shape within each wave height group.
A typical result for vertical accelerations in passenger lounge in head seas is presented
in Fig. 5. These results are based on calculations for a speed range of 017 knots and a sea
state range of 26.
These calculations must be performed for all headings and for each seakeeping
response which may affect the performance of the vessel. Typical examples are shown in
Figs. 6 and 7. In these figures the root mean square (RMS) vertical acceleration levels
(m/s2) in passenger saloon are plotted for a range of headings from head seas to following
seas, for sea states 5 and 6. The acceleration levels are selected in accordance with levels
described by the ISO 2631 standard for different exposure times. Circles in the figures
represent forward speed while the radial lines represent the wave heading.

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Fig. 5. The variation of vertical accelerations with speed and sea state in head seas.

2.4. Seakeeping criteria

In order to assess the effect of seakeeping performance on the mission capability of the
vessel the mission requirements need to be translated into seakeeping performance
requirements. However, there is no distinct universal set of criteria for seakeeping
performance. The criteria can vary vastly from ship to ship depending on the missions of
the ship.
An important key to the acceptability of a passenger vessel is the ride comfort
expressed as a low percentage of passengers getting seasick in rough seas. Vertical and
lateral accelerations are mainly responsible for seasickness.
Table 2 presents a tentative scale for vertical acceleration, which may be used for
estimating the maximum acceptable magnitude for different activities on board and for the
comfort of the crew and the passengers.
Typical performance criteria for personnel performance in a warship are listed in
Table 3. These criteria are given as significant single amplitude which is the average of the
one-third of highest amplitudes and is close to what the trained observer would estimate
the motions to be.
The concept of Motion Sickness Indicator (MSI) was developed in a study
sponsored by the US Navy in the early 1970s to investigate the effect on humans of
ship motions (OHanlon and McCauley, 1974). The research attempted to quantify the
incidence of actual vomiting (emesis) of a group (over 500) of young men,
unacclimatized to motions, subjected to vertical sinusoidal vertical motion of various
amplitudes at a series of single frequencies. The range of RMS acceleration and
frequency was selected as 0.275.5 m/s 2 and 0.0830.700 Hz, respectively.

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Fig. 6. Speed polar diagram of RMS vertical acceleration in sea state 5.

The experiments showed that the occurrence of emesis was correlated with both
acceleration and frequency and, using empirical data, a motion sickness incidence
relationship was derived. The MSI value indicates the percent of subjects that
experienced emesis in a 2-h test period. According to the test data, people have
significantly less tolerance to vertical motion in the 0.20.16 Hz (56 s) range than at
higher or lower frequencies. This is in accordance with experience on ships at sea.
Results of these experiments are often expressed in terms of the acceleration level
found to cause 10% of the subjects to become physically ill when subjected to such
motions for a specified time interval. It should be noted that, the validity of the MSI is tied
to the many constraints imposed by the laboratory environment. The subjects used in the
experiment were all healthy young college males, unacclimated to any form of shipboard
motion. Furthermore, the effect of roll and pitch motions are ignored.
Motion induced interruptions (MIIs) represent the number of loss-of-balance events
which occur during an arbitrary deck operation (Graham, 1990). It was shown that the
incidence of MIIs could be related to a concept of lateral force estimator (LFE), which is a
combination of the earth-referenced lateral acceleration and the ship-referenced lateral
acceleration due to roll motion. This greatly reduces computational efforts since the LFE

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Fig. 7. Speed polar diagram of RMS vertical acceleration in sea state 6.

Table 2
Limiting criteria for vertical acceleration (Odabas et al., 1991)
Vertical RMS
acceleration (g)

Description

0.020

Passengers on a cruise liner. Older people. Close to the lower threshold below which
vomiting is unlikely
Passengers on a ferry. The international standard for 2 h exposure period. Causes symptoms
of motion sickness in approximately 10% of unacclimatized adults
Intellectual work by people reasonably well adapted to ship motions (i.e. scientific personnel
on ocean research vessels). Cognitive/manual work of a more demanding nature. Long term
tolerable for the crew. The international standard for half an hour exposure period
Heavy manual work by people adapted to ship motions: for instance on fishing vessels and
supply ships
Light manual work by people adapted to ship motions. Not tolerable for longer periods.
Quickly causes fatigue
Simple light work. Most of the attention must be devoted to keeping balance. Tolerable only
for short periods on high-speed craft

0.050
0.100

0.150
0.200
0.275

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Table 3
Typical personnel performance criteria for warships
Application

Motion

Limit

Location

General

Vertical Acceleration
Lateral Acceleration
MSI
MII

0.4 g
0.2 g
20% of personnel
1/min

Bridge
Bridge
Task location
Task location

Specific Task

Fig. 8. ISO 2631 severe discomfort boundaries.

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value can be calculated in the frequency domain. Implicit in the LFE concept is the
assumption that the ship-referenced vertical acceleration is negligible; hence, the LFE is
only a valid estimator of MIIs under conditions in which the vertical acceleration is small.
The main source of criteria on motion sickness is the International Standard ISO 2631
(ISO 2631-3, 1985). ISO standard 2631/3/1985 covers vertical vibration in the frequency
range 0.10.63 Hz and links the factors of vertical acceleration, exposure time and
frequency, and provides severe discomfort boundaries in terms of the RMS vertical
acceleration for different exposure times as a function of the centre frequency of one-third
octave band, as shown in Fig. 8. This forms an ideal basis for the analysis of motion
sickness on ships.
Experimental observations indicate that the greatest sensitivity to vertical accelerations
is in the range of 0.1250.25 Hz with a rapid reduction in sensitivity at higher frequencies.
Above 0.315 Hz, the severe discomfort boundary defined by ISO 2631/3 increases by the
rate of 10 dB per octave.
The field data indicates that about 10% of the passengers will be seasick when the root
mean square (RMS) acceleration is 0.5 m/s2 (approximately 0.05 g significant) which is
also the ISO-boundary for an exposure period of two hours in the frequency range
0.10.315 Hz.
As shown in Fig. 8, depending on exposure time and frequency of oscillation, different
values of RMS vertical acceleration could be selected as seakeeping criteria. This would
result in different levels of habitability for the same sea conditions. The effect of selected
acceleration levels on habitability assessment is illustrated in the following section.

3. Habitability assessment
For each combination of speed, heading, and sea state, seakeeping performance can be
assessed using the speed polar diagram concept. In the diagram a set of limiting criteria is
used to define an area of ship speed and relative heading combinations within which
particular missions can be executed without violating any of the limiting criteria. The ratio
of the habitable area to the area of the polar plot defines an Habitability Index for the ship,
seaway and sea state being considered.
In order to illustrate the effect of chosen criteria on habitability, the vertical
accelerations at the passenger saloon were calculated for sea states 5 and 6 with
corresponding significant wave height values of 3.25 and 5 m, respectively. Speed polar
diagrams on the basis of different levels of RMS vertical accelerations, specified by ISO
Table 4
The selected levels of accelerations
Exposure time

RMS acceleration (m/s2)

8h
4h
2h
1h
30 min

0.250
0.315
0.500
0.707
1.000

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Fig. 9. Habitability indices as a function of selected limiting acceleration level.

2631 as a function of exposure time, are shown in Figs. 6 and 7. The selected levels of
accelerations are defined in Table 4.
As shown in the speed polar diagrams the level of RMS vertical acceleration
significantly affect the estimated habitability. For this vessel, in sea states 5 and 6,
the estimated habitability based on vertical accelerations at passenger saloon are shown
in Fig. 9.

4. Concluding remarks
The assessment of seakeeping performance of a vessel in a specified sea area is a
common computational procedure for which a typical example is presented in this paper.
This procedure requires the prediction of transfer functions for different speed and
headings for each response. These transfer functions are then combined with an
appropriate spectral formulation based on the sea area characteristics. The results are
presented in a polar format where for each speed and heading combinations the variation
of motion characteristics with increasing sea state can be established. Provided that a set of
reliable seakeeping criteria are available the habitability of the vessel in different sea states
can be estimated.
However, there are no universally agreed criteria for comparing the seakeeping
performance of alternative designs. For passenger ships, the criteria are dominated by

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vertical and lateral accelerations. ISO 2631 provides severe discomfort boundaries as a
function of frequency and exposure time. The results indicate that even slight variations in
exposure time may result in significant differences in estimated habitability. Hence, the
methods currently used for comparing the seakeeping capabilities of ships can be
misleading.
It is shown in the paper that, the estimated habitability of a passenger vessel in a
specified sea area strongly depends on the selected limiting acceleration level. Therefore,
particularly in comparative seakeeping analyses, the chosen set of criteria and its
parameters must specifically be described in order to provide reliable seakeeping
performance information.

References
Graham, R., 1990. Motion induced interruptions as ship operability criteria. Naval Engineers Journal 102 (2).
ISO, 1985. Evaluation of Human Exposure to Whole-body VibrationPart 3: Evaluation of Whole-body z-axis
Vertical Vibration in the Frequency Range 0.1 to 0.63 Hz.
ISO, 1997. Mechanical Vibration and Shock Evaluation of Human Exposure to Whole Body VibrationPart 1:
General Requirements.
Odabas A.Y., Fitzsimmons P.A., Ankudinov V.K., Wiley S.A., 1991. Seakeeping Considerations in Ship Design
and Their Incorporation in HDDS. BMT International, Report No. HDDS.P2.SPEC.
OHanlon, J.F., McCauley, M.E., 1974. Motion sickness as a function of the frequency and acceleration of
vertical sinusoidal motion. Aerospace Medicine 45 (4), 366369.