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Article
Numerical Simulation of the Wind-Stress Effect on SAR Imagery of Far Wakes of Ships
IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Letters
  • Atsushi Fujimura, Nova Southeastern University
  • Alexander Soloviev, Nova Southeastern University
  • Vladimir Kudryavtsev, Nansen Environmental and Remote Sensing Center - Bergen, Norway; Nansen Environmental and Remote Sensing Center - St. Petersburg, Russia
ORCID
0000-0001-6519-1547
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
10-1-2010
Keywords
  • Hydrodynamics,
  • Numerical analysis,
  • Remote sensing,
  • Sea surface,
  • Synthetic aperature radar (SAR)
Abstract

Centerline wakes of ships in synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images were modeled in 2-D with the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) software Fluent and a radar-imaging algorithm. We initialized the model with a pair of vortices generated by a ship hull and applied wind stress perpendicular to the ship wake. Results of the CFD simulation using a nonhydrostatic model have demonstrated ship-wake asymmetry with respect to the wind-stress direction relative to the ship course. Due to the wind stress, flow convergence increased on the upwind side of the centerline wake and reduced on the downwind side of the wake. The radar-imaging algorithm processed with the surface velocity field produced by the CFD model revealed ship-wake asymmetry relative to the wind direction. These results are qualitatively consistent with SAR images from the TerraSAR-X satellite and representative statistics of photographic images of the ship wake collected from a volunteer observing ship.

DOI
10.1109/LGRS.2010.2043920
Comments

©2010 IEEE

Citation Information
Atsushi Fujimura, Alexander Soloviev and Vladimir Kudryavtsev. "Numerical Simulation of the Wind-Stress Effect on SAR Imagery of Far Wakes of Ships" IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Letters Vol. 7 Iss. 4 (2010) p. 646 - 649 ISSN: 1545-598X
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/alexander-soloviev/43/