A Strength Analysis of a Hull Girder in a Rough Sea

A ship in waves is suffered from the various wave loads that comes from its motion throughout its life. Because these loads are dynamic, the analysis of a ship structure must be considered as the dynamic problem precisely. In the rationally-based design, the dynamic structural analysis is carried out using dynamic wave loads provided from the results of the ship motion calculation as a rigid body. This method is based on the linear theory assumed low wave height and small amplitude of motion. But at the rough sea condition, high wave height, compared with ship's depth, induce the large ship motion, so the ship section configuration under waterline is rapidly changed at each time. This results in a non-linear problem. Considering above situation in this paper, a strength analysis method is introduced for the hull girder among waves considering non-linear hydrodynamic forces. This paper evaluates the overall or primary level of the ship structural dynamic loading and dynamic response provided from the non-linear wave forces, and bottom flare impact forces by momentum slamming theory. For numerical calculation a ship is idealized as a hollow thin-walled box beam using thin walled beam theory and the finite element method is used. This method applied to a 40,000 ton double hull tanker and attention is paid to the influence of the response of the ship's speed, wave length and wave height compared with the linear strip theory.