ABSTRACT

This paper presents the results of a numerical study of bottom slamming. Impact interaction of a flexible ship structure with compressible water domain is considered. A finite element method is applied to model the ship's structure and the water area. The effect of hydroelasticity is found to influence the impact pressure and, hence, the structural response significantly.

INTRODUCTION

The safety of a ship travelling in severe sea conditions depends on correct design of a marine structure, which is based on the accurate prediction of representative design loads. Impact pressure due to slamming can be considered as one of the most dangerous dynamic loads acting on ship structure. Up to 10–12% of the accidents with monohull ships for the last 30 years belong to damages due to slamming (ISSC, 1991). Wide application of the high-speed vessels today makes prediction of hydrodynamic loads extremely important. Optimization of the structural design with a purpose of reduction of the structural weight pushes the producers to application of quite flexible structures. At the same time in many modern designs a lot of new material is involved. Just a few decades ago steel was the traditional material for shipbuilding. Nowadays the number of fast vessels, which are made of aluminum alloys and composites, rapidly increases. This introduction of new materials makes the structures even more flexible in comparison with more conventional structures. Considering the present state of the art of research in slamming it should be noticed that till now the hydroelastic effects on ship structures have not been normally taken into account for slamming problem (ISSC, 1997). The common approach is to assume that the body penetrating into the liquid structure is not deformable (Arai, 1995a, 1995b).

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