I T T C R U L E S
Aims
The primary task of the International Towing Tank Conference is to stimulate progress in solving the technical problems that are of importance to towing tank Directors and Superintendents who are regularly responsible for giving advice and information regarding full-scale performance to designers, builders and operators of ships and marine installations based on the results of physical and numerical modelling. The Conference also aims at stimulating research in all fields in which a better knowledge of the hydrodynamics of ships and marine installations is needed to improve methods of model experiments, numerical modelling and full-scale measurements; at recommending procedures for general use in carrying out physical model experiments and numerical modelling of ships and marine installations; in validating the accuracy of such full-scale predictions and measurements for quality assurance; at formulating collective policy on matters of common interest; and at providing an effective organisation for the interchange of information on such matters.
Activities
The aims of the Conference shall be pursued by:
2.1. Stimulating research into specific topics.
2.2. Organising and encouraging meetings to review progress in this research.
2.3. Making such recommendations and decisions on joint action and policy as seem desirable to the members of the Conference.
2.4. Establishing procedures and guidelines to help the member organisations to maintain their institutional credibility with regard to quality assurance of products and services, such as, performance prediction and evaluation of designs by either experimental or computational means.
2.5. Recording and publishing discussions taking place at ITTC meetings.
Membership
Membership of the Conference shall be open to all towing tanks or model test laboratories that regularly have direct responsibilities to the designers, builders and operators of ships and marine installations, and also to other organisations that contribute to the aims of the Conference. Each such organisation shall satisfy the Executive Committee that it is eligible for membership. Each Member Organisation shall be represented by its Director, Superintendent or an equivalent. In addition, the Executive Committee may invite individuals who have contributed and/or can contribute significantly to the aims of the Conference to take part in the work of the Conference.
Organisation
Conference
The Full Conference1 will consist of the representatives of the Member Organisations, members of the Technical Committees and Groups, and such additional individuals who are invited and approved by the Executive Committee and satisfy the membership requirements of Paragraph 3. The Full Conference shall determine its policies, decide the subject matters to be considered, elect the Chair of the Executive Committee, elect the Chair of each Technical Committee or Group and appoint members to the Technical Committees and Groups.
Executive Committee
The Executive Committee shall normally consist of seven full-voting members, six of them being the current six geographic Area Representatives. An Area Representative shall be selected on a geographic basis by member organisations of that particular geographic area and, where at all possible, should represent a member organisation of the Advisory Council. Exceptions to the Area Representative being from a member organisation of the Advisory Council shall be approved by the Executive Committee. Each Area Representative shall normally serve for two terms. Each region shall decide on its own procedure for selection (election) of its Area Representative. The Chair of the next Executive Committee shall be elected by a Full Conference at the end of that Conference and act as Chair until the end of the next Full Conference. The new Chair of the Executive Committee will be the Chair of the Conference and the representative of the Member organisation who will organise the next Full Conference. In addition to the foregoing members of the Executive Committee, the Chair and Secretary of the Advisory Council and the past Chair of the Executive Committee will be non-voting ex-officio members of the Executive Committee. The past Chair may be appointed as Vice-Chair of the Committee. Should the past Chair be the representative of a geographic area then that person will be a full voting member of the Executive Committee. The Secretary of the Executive Committee is elected by the members of the Executive Committee and will normally serve for the term of one Conference.
The Executive Committee shall implement the decisions of the Full Conference. It proposes Members and the Chairs of Technical Committees and Groups for appointment by the Full Conference. It replaces Technical Committee and Group members as necessary between Full Conferences.
Advisory Council
The Advisory Council shall recommend to the Executive Committee subjects to be considered, bearing in mind that the primary aim of the Conference is to solve technical problems of importance to Tank Directors and Superintendents. It will review the Recommendations of the Technical Committees and advise the Executive Committee accordingly. The Member Organisations to be represented on the Advisory Council shall be proposed by the Executive Committee for appointment by the Advisory Council. Such organisations have to satisfy the following conditions:
a. Shall carry out a substantial portion of their work for clients and shall be able to demonstrate a prior and ongoing responsibility for the prediction of performance of actual vessels and marine installations. Substantial portion of their work means that a substantial portion of their income comes from clients ordering work. These clients could be commercial clients, government organisations, or other organisations within the same company.
b. Shall have a long history of work in support of the ITTC as evidenced by membership of Committees and Groups, providing data in support of Committee and Group works, or making written contributions to Committees and Groups.
c. Shall have the capability of performing a variety of investigations within the scope of the ITTC. No limit is put on the total number of members. However, each member of the Advisory Council must be confirmed as a member every six years in order to remain a member of the Advisory Council. They must re-establish that they meet the criteria a, b and c. In addition, they must have had a record of regular attendance at meetings of the Advisory Council and the Full Conference and meaningful contribution to the Advisory Council. Half the member organisations will be confirmed every three years. The Advisory Council will establish the procedure for confirmation. Member Organisations of the ITTC, who satisfy the criteria a, b, and c, may nominate their representative on the Advisory Council, accepting that this representative will be their sole voice in the policy of the ITTC.
The representative should be a senior technical member of the management of the Member Organization, able to contribute to technical discussions on hydrodynamic testing, numerical modelling and full scale measurement, and with the authority to commit the organisational support for the work of the ITTC, such as, providing personnel to serve on the Technical Committees or Groups, or undertaking specific tasks.
Each member of the Executive Committee will be an ex-officio member of the Advisory Council if he/she is not already a member in his own right as a representative of a member organisation. In the event of the nominated representative being unable to attend, the relevant Member Organisation may send an alternate representative with either full authority satisfying the foregoing paragraph, or as an observer. The level of authority must be conveyed in writing to the Advisory Council by the Member Organisation before the meeting.
The Chair, Vice-Chair and Secretary of the Advisory Council shall be elected by its members between one year and one-half year prior to the next Full Conference. The election will be by secret ballot if so desired by any member. They shall take office immediately following the end of this Full Conference.
Technical Committees
The Technical Committees will consist of two types. One type will be on "General Subject Areas" (General Committees), such as: Resistance, Propulsion, Manoeuvring, Loads and Responses, and will be continuing committees. The other type will be on "Specialty Subject Areas" (Specialist Committees), such as: Waterjets, where a specific technical problem needs to be addressed and, as such, will be a limited-duration committee.
The Technical Committees shall develop detail technical plans in accordance with Conference recommendations. The work of all Technical Committees should be directed towards the techniques and understanding of physical and numerical modelling as a means of predicting full-scale behaviour. While maintaining an awareness of progress, fundamental theoretical studies and fundamental aspects of numerical fluid computation should be covered by other forums such as ONR or Numerical Ship Hydrodynamics symposia, etc. The conclusions and recommendations of the Technical Committees should be structured into three separate parts:
1. General technical conclusions;
2. Recommendations to the Conference on carrying out or reporting work requiring Conference action (e.g., testing techniques, symbols, prediction techniques, etc.); and
3. Recommendations for future work of the Committee.
In particular, (2) and (3) should be concrete and specific.
Written contributions to the program of work of a Technical Committee may be submitted to its Chair by any member of the Conference on his/her own behalf or on behalf of any other individual. Each Technical Committee may include a short abstract of any such contributions in its report, with an indication of the source from which the full report may be obtained. Conference proceedings and technical reports are not to be used as vehicles for disseminating technical papers.
Each Technical Committee shall normally consist of not more than eight members, including the Chair. The Chair and members should in all cases be selected for their personal contributions to, interest in, and ability to contribute to the subject area of that Technical Committee. Qualifications as well as balanced geographic representation shall be considered in the selection process. For General Committees, each geographic area will be allowed to present to the Executive Committee a "curriculum vitae" of only one candidate for each Technical Committee and once the first six positions have been successfully filled, then each geographic area who wishes to nominate an additional candidate may place a "curriculum vitae" of another candidate forward for the two remaining positions on that Technical Committee. For Specialist Committees each geographic area may nominate any number of candidates. The membership of each Technical Committee shall be reviewed by the Conference at intervals of not more than three years. Membership on a single Technical Committee should not exceed three consecutive terms of three years. No person may serve on more than one Technical Committee at any one time. Additionally, the member organisation sponsoring the candidate must have agreed to support the candidate financially in carrying out his/her committee work and travel to committee meetings.
A Technical Committee member who is unable to continue in Committee work will be replaced according to the following guidelines:
1. The name of the replacement Technical Committee member may be suggested by a Member Organisation, the pertinent Technical Committee Chair, or the Executive Committee Area Representative of the member to be replaced.
2. The Technical Committee Chair and the above Executive Committee Area Representative will jointly recommend the name of the replacement member to the Executive Committee.
3. The Executive Committee appoints the new Technical Committee member.
Groups
Groups may be established from time to time by the Executive Committee to carry out specific tasks for the Conference, which are not specific technical issues. Examples of such Groups are the Symbols and Terminology Group and the Quality Control Group. Membership on a Group should not exceed three consecutive terms of three years, but the Executive Committee is privileged to make exceptions. Also, Groups normally shall have fewer members than the Technical Committees. Such Groups shall be disestablished upon completion of their respective task objectives.
Meetings
Meetings
Meetings of the Executive Committee, Technical Committees, Groups and the Advisory Council shall be held whenever their members consider them necessary. However, there should be no more than four meetings of a Technical Committee or Group between Full Conferences.
Conferences
Full Conferences will meet at three-year intervals but the Full Conference may alter this interval at any time. Invitations from member organisations to host the Full Conference of the next interval must be sent to the Executive Committee, through their Area Representative, at least one year before the Full Conference of the current interval. The Executive Committee and the Full Conference should ensure a balanced rotation of the Full Conference venue among the six geographic areas.
The host country may invite observers to attend the Full Conference but they may not take any active part in its work apart from contributing verbally to technical sessions. The detailed organisation of each Full Conference is the responsibility of the host country, which will also arrange for the preparation and publication of the Proceedings of that Full Conference.
Each Full Conference will include Technical Sessions at which the Reports and Recommendations of the Technical Committees may be discussed by all Delegates; no discussion will be permitted that is not directly related to the Report and Recommendations under consideration.
Following the Technical Sessions, each Technical Committee will recast its recommendations, if necessary. The Advisory Council will review these Recommendations and advise the Executive Committee accordingly. At the Final Session of the Full Conference, these Recommendations will be presented for approval.
Composition of Executive Committee based on geographic areas
7.1. The Executive Committee shall consist of seven full-voting members.
7.2. The President and host of the next Full Conference shall be Chair.
7.3. There shall be six Area Representatives, one belonging to each of the Geographic Areas given in Section 8.
7.4. The representative of each geographic area will be appointed at least one-half year prior to the Full Conference by the member organisations of that area.
List of geographic areas
General additional guide-lines for the operation of the ITTC
No delegate should serve in more than one official capacity, nor on more than one Technical Committee, of the ITTC at the same time. An official capacity2 is considered to be:
1. Membership of the Executive Committee.
2. Chair and Secretary of the Advisory Council.
3. Chair of a Technical Committee or Group.
Full Conference is defined as the meeting of all members that takes place every three years.
While membership of a Committee or Group is not included in this definition, it is generally expected that delegates will not perform in such a capacity in addition to (a) or (b), except for short periods of time at the expressed recommendation of the Executive Committee.
