Validation of the global hydroelastic model for springing & whipping of ships

Hydroelastic response of the ship can represent an important part of the overall structural response. This is true both for the extreme ship structural response as well as for the fatigue loads of some structural details. Several full scale monitoring campaigns on the container ships clearly show an important high frequency contribution coming from the global wave induced ship vibrations. Correct numerical modeling of these phenomena is extremely difficult and only approximate models exist up to now. During last several years an efficient hydroelastic model based on the state of the art numerical techniques was developed within the cooperation in between TNO and Bureau Veritas. The model couples the 3D hydrodynamics with either non-uniform beam or 3DFEM structural dynamics. This model showed to be very efficient in terms of the CPU time and in terms of qualitative picture of the time histories of the structural responses. At the same time, several experimental campaigns were undertaken and are in progress, in order to provide the data for validation of the numerical models. The present paper will give an introduction in the numerical method and present some results of these comparisons. © 2010 COPPE/UFRJ.