Examples of selected research efforts made on characteristics of material, ship side structure response and ship survivability in ship collisions

The conditions for damage stability and survivability of a struck ship in arbitrary sea-state are, from a structural point of view, determined by the size and shape of the damage opening in the struck ship. To be able to make realistic simulations and draw conclusions on these topics, it is of outmost importance that research on ship collision investigate in detail the features of structural integrity, characteristics and failure phenomena that interact during, for example, a collision. A contribution to the field is presented in the current article which summarises research experiences from a group that is working with ship collision safety, using both experiments and numerical simulations by finite element (FE) analysis. Results are presented from tensile and forming limit tests, followed by FE analyses of these with the objective of predicting material rupture using appropriate constitutive material models and damage criteria. An example of an innovative design of a side-shell structure that is considered being more intrusion-tolerant than most side-shell structures used today is demonstrated. Finally, results from a research project which has a holistic approach on the assessment of survivability of a struck ship are presented. In the project, a methodology has been developed which combines structural analysis, damage stability analysis followed by risk analysis. Examples of results are presented where the probability of survival is calculated for various sea-state conditions.