Artificial Intelligence Machine Learning in Marine Hydrodynamics

Artificial Intelligence (AI) Support Vector Machine (SVM) learning algorithms have enjoyed rapid growth in recent years with applications in a wide range of disciplines often with impressive results. The present paper introduces this machine learning technology to the field of marine hydrodynamics for the study of complex potential and viscous flow problems. Examples considered include the forecasting of the seastate elevations and vessel responses using their past time records as “explanatory variables” or “features” and the development of a nonlinear model for the roll restoring, added moment of inertia and viscous damping using the vessel response kinematics from free decay tests as “features”. A key innovation of AI-SVM kernel algorithms is that the nonlinear dependence of the dependent variable on the “features” is embedded into the SVM kernel and its selection plays a key role in the performance of the algorithms. The kernel selection is discussed and its relation to the physics of the marine hydrodynamic flows considered in the present paper is addressed.