Ship Hull Bottom Slamming

A method is presented to evaluate the hull bending moment due to bottom slamming. Theoretical explanations and updates are given to the commonly used empirical results, and some observations are made on slamming. An energy approach combined with a strip theory is used to get the hydrodynamic load, and to analyze the effects of the forward velocity. Impacts of simple bodies are simulated numerically to describe these loads. The ship hull is represented as a nonuniform free-free beam, and its response is decomposed into normal modes; only the contribution of the first one is kept. In a numerical example, the bending moment during the impact is determined. It is shown that its value when the impact is over is much harder to predict. The maximum value of the bending moment, however, occurs during the impact, and is an increasing function of the vertical velocity, as expected. A simple expression is given for it.