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The Cruise Terminal of Rotterdam is situated at the river Maas in an urban area with both low-rise and high-rise buildings. Cruise ships navigating and mooring here interact with a complex wind flow field around these buildings. Rotterdam Port Authority wishes to know which wind conditions will cause the highest wind load on the cruise ships and how these wind loads can be predict-ed best. CFD simulations are performed and compared to locally obtained measurement data. Based on the CFD simulations a soft-ware application is developed to calculate the wind load on moored cruise ships based on wind speed and wind direction at a refer-ence measurement position.

Information on wind conditions in harbors and wind loads on ships is important for safe maneuvering and mooring of ships. The wind conditions in harbors are very complex and characterized by a multitude of internal atmospheric boundary layers due to the large variations in terrain roughness. This paper presents the development of data to support a software application for assessment of wind conditions in the Port of Rotterdam. An extensive measurement campaign using ultrasonic anemometers was performed in the harbor during a period of 6 months. These measurements were compared with the numerical simulations with Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) on a high-resolution grid. This comparison showed a good agreement for such a complex heterogeneous terrain. 89% of the simulated amplification factors (¿=Ump/Ump1) were within the range of the mean measured amplification factors ± two times the standard deviation. These data will be used in the near future to support a software application for the harbor authorities and tugboat pilots to allow improved safety, maneuverability and mooring of container ships.

Knowledge of microscale wind conditions is important for maneuvering and mooring of ships and for optimizing the harbor design. The aim of this study is to translate the macroscale wind conditions measured at a near shore reference station to the local (microscale) wind conditions in the harbor docks. In the first part of the project, an extensive experimental campaign has been performed, which consisted of wind velocity measurements with 2D and 3D ultrasonic anemometers during a period of 6 months. These point measurements confirm the unique relation between the macroscale and microscale wind conditions during periods of strong winds. As the measurements only provide information at a number of discrete positions, the second part of the study consists of numerical simulations with Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) to map the wind environmental conditions over the entire study area. The measurements and simulations both show very large gradients in mean wind speed over the harbor area, with differences up to 100%. The numerical simulations are currently in progress and will be validated by comparison with the on-site measurements.