Quasi-Static Flooding Analysis Method of a Damaged Ship Considering Oil Spill and Cargo Load

Abstract

When a ship is damaged at sea, it is important to predict its behavior as well as whether it is to sink or not. If the ship comes to an equilibrium, the equilibrium position and time should be estimated; otherwise, the time to sink should be estimated. Furthermore, flooding analysis should be carried out not only during the design stage of the ship for preventive reasons, but also after an accident for a better investigation of its causes. In addition, flooding analysis methods that can provide predictions in case of an accident are of particular importance, as there is no time for the required calculations in an emergency. For this purpose, a quasi-static flooding analysis method for the damaged ship in the time domain is proposed in this study. There are a number of studies in which the equilibrium position and time were estimated by flooding analysis. However, most of them have not considered the air pressure effect in fully flooded compartments, and the method of determining the fluid volume in these compartments was not accurate. In the present study, the virtual vent and accumulator method are used to calculate the reference pressure in the fully flooded compartments, and the compartment shape is considered by using polyhedral integration. Also, spilled oil and solid cargo items from the damaged ship are taken into account for realistic flooding analysis. Finally, the damage stability criteria were checked not only in the final state, but also during the entire time of the flooding, as the intermediate states can be more hazardous than the final state. To validate the feasibility of the proposed method, it was applied to a naval ship, which is considerably more stringent for damage stability. As a result, we checked the availability of this study.