Abstract
At the initial stage of propulsion shaft design, in line with shaft alignment, an intensified consideration of lateral vibration is needed to verify its operational safety. Recently the alignment problem affecting the lateral vibration has been becoming issues. However, the theoretical method of forced lateral vibration analysis is not cleary established so far and it is about to simply limited among the classification societies and international standards to avoid the blade natural frequency resonance cpm outside of ${\pm}20%$ of engine rpm at MCR. On the other hand, longer center distance between each support bearing shows an affirmative result normally in shaft alignment analysis whereas the blade order resonance speed may cause lowering near the limitation in the aspect of lateral vibration. Therefore, it is required careful attention to engineers as described above. As a method to solve the problem, it is mainly considered that remove forward stern tube bearing. In this paper, based on a medium size container ship case, theoretical study was carried out in the context of the forward stern tube bearing. The various effects and functions of forward stern tube bearing are reviewed and evaluated. Then an guidance note to lead the conclusion is proposed.