Abstract

Ship collisions are catastrophic accidents, and may cause structural damage to the colliding ships. Vessels might be sunk and accidents may cause cargo leakage and generate pollution. A vertical collision from the rigid bulbous bow to the amidships is the worst situation in shipship collision. Thus it is necessary to improve the ship crashworthiness by improving the energy absorption capacity of the side structure, such as filling sandwiches (honeycomb sandwich plate, tube-style sandwich panels, folding sandwich plate etc.) in single-hull ships. The aim of this present study is to investigate the crashworthiness of a ship with laminated honeycomb sandwich panels under lateral dynamic loads through a simulation with the finite element program MSC/Dytran. The damage deformation, the crushing load as well as the energy absorption of improved side laminated sandwich ships will be compared with the typical non-laminated sandwich ship through numerical simulations. These simulations verified that the side filling sandwich structure can effectively improve the ship crashworthiness performance while providing information to optimize the structure of the sandwich. Side filling interlayers increase the crashworthiness of a ship broadsides but also increase the mass of the ship. So it is necessary to design optimally the ship's side crashworthiness and ship's mass. Calculation of an optimal model based on the three kinds of different structural designs for sandwich layers can ensure the effective crashworthiness of the ship side structure while not adding much weight to the ship.

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