Effect of initial bias on the roll response and stability of ships in beam seas

This study intended to evaluate the behavior of a biased ship under main, sub and super harmonic resonant excitation. For the sake of simplicity Duffing's equation is used for un-biased roll equation. In the first part of this study, first and second order approximate solutions of biased roll equation have been obtained for different equation parameters in main, sub and super harmonic resonance regions by using method of multiple scales and Bogoliubov-Mitropolsky asymptotic method. It was found that second order approximate solutions had a better compliance with numerical results when the solution is stable. In the second part, stable solution bounds of the biased roll equation were obtained for different equation parameters by using numerical methods. It was found that the size of the bounds are highly dependent on initial bias angle, linear damping coefficient, amplitude and frequency of wave excitation and phase angle of the excitation force and also the symmetry of the bounds were dependent on the magnitude of the initial bias angle. From the results obtained it can be concluded that Lyapunov's stability theory provides the most reliable results.