The emphasis is put on the detailed knowledge on manoeuvring characteristic for the safe navigation while avoiding terrible collision between ships and on the guideline to the design and operation of the ship-waterway system The numerical simulation of manoeuvring motion was carried out parametrically for different ship types, ship-velocity ratios, separation and stagger between ships. As for the calculation parameters, the ratios of velocity difference (hereafter, U2/U1 ) between two ships were considered as 0.6, 1.2, 1.5. From the inspection of this investigation, it indicates the following result. Considering the interaction force only as parameter, the lateral distance between ships is necessarily required for the ship-velocity ratio of 1.2, compared to the cases of 0.6 and 1.5 regardless of the ship types. Furthermore, regardless of the ship-velocity ratio, an overtaking and overtaken vessel can be manoeuvred safely without deviating from the original course under the following conditions: the lateral distance between two vessels is approximately kept at 0.5 times of ship-length and 5 through 10. degrees of range in maximum rudder angle. The manoeuvring characteristic based on this investigation will be very useful for keeping the safety of navigation from the practical point of ships design and traffic control in restricted waterways.

• Chun-Ki Lee
• Il-Kwon Kang