While the advanced art of minimising the installed power for a given speed plays a clear role in the design of container ships, the place of seakeeping is less well established. The incidental character of seakeeping problems at sea in combination with the fact that building for good seakeeping may decrease the container capacity and increase the building costs seems a major reason for this, in addition to the sheer complexity of the issues. The present paper addresses the last point with an effort to give a complete review of the seakeeping issues in containership design. Based on recent experience from model tests the work explores the physical nature of the involuntary speed loss in waves and reasons for a voluntary speed reduction (green water loads, whipping accelerations due to bow and stern slamming, engine racing) or change in course (exposure of containers to wave crests, rolling). In addition a review is given of the extreme behaviour that the master would like to avoid altogether, like excessive heel due to loss of stability in following seas and parametric roll. Based on the results tentative design guidance is formulated.
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