To improve survivability on damaged ship, cross-flooding devices have been widely used. In this work, the flooding process of a damaged cruise ship with cross-flooding devices is investigated using CFD method. The numerical simulations are carried out on naoe-FOAM-SJTU solver developed based on the open source code OpenFOAM. The incompressible URANS equations are adopted as the governing equations. The VOF method, dynamic grid technique and a six degree of freedom module are used in simulating two cases of coupled heave-roll motion and pure roll motion of flooding. The coupled heave-roll motion effect on flooding process is discussed. Detailed flow field information such as velocity distribution around the flooding holes and cross-flooding devices is presented.
A variety of maritime tragedies such as flooding, collision, stranding, fire and explosion, have caused irreparable damage to human life and cargo safety (Zhang et al., 1998). As a modern maritime excursion ship, the cruise integrates navigation, entertainment and leisure functions. With the development of the scale, the safety of cruise ships has attracted much attention. International Maritime Organization (IMO) has imposed strict demand on stability and damaged stability of the cruise in SOLAS(2013). The European research project SAFEDOR (2005–2009) shows that the risk to human life caused by flooding is the dominant issue for passenger ship safety. Therefore, studying the stability and motion characteristics of the damaged cruise can provide a reference for effectively reducing the loss. Compared with the intact stability, the dynamic stability of the damaged ship is more complicated. Therefore, it is of vital importance to establish appropriate life-saving measures and evacuation procedures to do the time domain simulation of the dynamic stability of the damaged ship.
In the design of cruise ships, the cross-flooding devices are often used to reduce the roll angle in an emergency situation. The cross-flooding holes are mainly used for the connection of adjacent tanks. When the ship is damaged on one side, the cross-flooding devices can quickly introduce seawater into the unbroken side so that the ship could restore rapidly. The cross-flooding devices can increase the survival probability after the ship is damaged, thereby increasing the achieved subdivision index.
