Numerical Simulation of the Wind-Stress Effect on SAR Imagery of Far Wakes of Ships

Authors

Atsushi Fujimura, Nova Southeastern University
Alexander Soloviev, Nova Southeastern UniversityFollow
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 Title

IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Letters

ISSN

1545-598X

Publication Date

10-2010

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

Volume

7

Issue

4

First Page

646

Last Page

649

Comments

©2010 IEEE

NSUWorks Citation

Atsushi Fujimura, Alexander Soloviev, and Vladimir Kudryavtsev. 2010. Numerical Simulation of the Wind-Stress Effect on SAR Imagery of Far Wakes of Ships .IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Letters , (4) : 646 -649. https://nsuworks.nova.edu/occ_facarticles/624.