• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.74 no.4
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• pp.521-532
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• 2020

A floating dry dock is an advanced structure that can provide a solution for dry dock space shortages. The critical point in floating dock operation is compensating the deflection caused by a heavy payload by adjusting the water level in the ballast system. An appropriate ballasting plan warrants safe and precise construction on a floating dock. Particularly, in the case of a 2D floating dock, ballasting plan evaluation is crucial due to complex deformation modes. In this paper, we developed a method to calculate the optimal ballasting plan for accurate and precise construction on a 2D floating dock. The finite element method was used for considering the flexibility of the floating dock as well as the construction blocks. Through a gradient-based optimization algorithm, the optimal ballasting plan for the given load condition was calculated in semi-real time (5 min). The present method was successfully used for the actual construction of an offshore structure on the 2D floating dock.

• Proceedings of the Korea Committee for Ocean Resources and Engineering Conference
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• 2004.11a
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• pp.62-67
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• 2004

Many ships in voyage experience weight and buoyancy distribution change by various reasons such as change of sea water density and waves, weather condition, and consumption of fuel, provisions, etc . The weight and buoyancy distribution change can bring the ships out of allowable trim, heeling angle. In these case, the ships should adjust trim and heeling angle by shifting of liquid cargo or ballasting, deballasting of ballast tanks for recovery of initial state or for a stable voyage. But, if the adjustment is performed incorrectly, ship's safety such as longitudinal strength, intact stability, propeller immersion, wide visibility, minimum forward draft cannot be secured correctly. So it is required that the adjustment of trim and heeling angle should be planned not by human operators but by optimization computer algorithm. To make an optimized plan to adjust trim and heeling angle guaranteeing the ship's safety and quickness of process, Uk! combined mechanical analysis and optimization algorithm. The candidate algorithms for the study were heuristic algorithm, meta-heuristic algorithm and uninformed searching algorithm. These are widely used in various kinds of optimization problems. Among them, heuristic algorithm $A^\ast$ was chosen for its optimality. The $A^\ast$ algorithm is then applied for the study. Three core elements of $A^\ast$ Algorithm consists of node, operator, evaluation function were modified and redefined. And we analyzed the $A^\ast$ algorithm by considering cooperation with loading instrument installed in most ships. Finally, the algorithm has been applied to tanker ship's various conditions such as Normal Ballast Condition, Homo Design Condition, Alternate Loading Condition, Also the test results are compared and discussed to confirm the efficiency and the usefulness of the methodology developed the system.