Ship manoeuvres on existing turning places - when the ships size reaches the limits of port infrastructure on the example of Kołobrzeg Port

Over the last time, the volume of maritime transported goods has raised dramatically and in parallel the size of ships under construction is growing, therefore the technical requirements for ports have been increased. The port infrastructure lifetime is usually set for more than 50 years, however new generation of ships are introduced in less than decades. The paper presents research in Kołobrzeg Port, where there was the need to put into operation larger ships than those currently operated with almost unchanged port infrastructure. The presented methodology for the ships manoeuvrability and ports infrastructure design on basis relation between ships manoeuvrability and port infrastructure elements, which are very important especially for the ports with limited accessibility. The researchers are very relevant to the both today, and in the nearest future navigational safety, and port development problems, as well as to the port optimisation requirements. It is important also, because EU Commission has announced an active policy to promote safe exploitation of the marine transportation as well the port development optimization and they are both important especially in smaller sea ports. Moreover, the increase of navigational safety should be as much as possible economic and environmental friendly. In the paper, the real time simulation methods of ship manoeuvring have been applied. Following a multidimensional analysis that took into consideration comfort and navigation safety of ship manoeuvres in the port, the optimum solution was proposed. The aim of the researches is to propose the decision makers the new solutions for the increasing the size of ships for the Kołobrzeg Port.