Visual simulation of a capsizing ship in stormy weather condition

Abstract

Ship capsizes in the extreme weather condition are difficult to predict, even though they cause a great number of casualties. Numerical methods have been developed to analyze the capsize phenomena and to predict the possible capsizes. The visual simulation can augment the physical evaluation of ship motion and validation of the experimental results. However, most of the existing visual simulations merely focus on the normal ship motion in general sea state and have less fascinating visual effect (VFX) compared with those in movie industry. In this paper, we propose a visual simulation method to generate stormy wave surface, to simulate wave properties such as splash and wake using particle simulation, to render the wave and its relevant stormy features and finally to compose the visual effects together. Wave simulation is based on the modified Tessendorf grid method of ocean wave, and SPH particles are adopted to simulate the wave properties. Lastly, the integrated rendering is to produce the scene of ship motion in storm condition.