Projects

Advanced Method to Predict Wave Induced Loads for High Speed Ships (WAVELOADS)

Duration: 01.01.1998 – 30.06.2001 (42 months)

Coordination: Germanischer Lloyd (Germany)

Partners: Instituto Superior Técnico (Portugal), BAZAN (Spain), Bureau Veritas (France), CEHIPAR (Spain), National Technical University of Athens (Greece).

Funding Entity: CEC BRITE/EURAM Programme

Hull structural damage sustained by modern high speed ships in severe seas indicates a need to improve methods of safe structural design. One critical factor is the lack of a practical and, at the same time, sufficiently accurate method to predict wave induced load effects for modern high speed ships. Rules of classification societies provide formulas for safe design loads. However, these formulas mostly reflect service experience of existing ships. Future designs include larger ships for which not enough service experience is available to serve as a basis for establishing adequate design methods and rule improvements. In addition, hull structures of economically competitive high speed ships are optimized for least weight. Thus, for optimum as well as safe structural hull designs of such ships by shipyards and to establish guidelines for rule improvement by classification societies, it becomes necessary to resort to design methods that incorporate numerical techniques. WAVELOADS addresses this need in that it responds with the development of such a method. The research will include strength analyses of representative hull structural configurations of high speed ships and the development of a sufficiently accurate practical numerical technique to predict wave induced design loads. This technique will be validated by systematic model tests in a towing basin and by comparative computations with an advanced nonlinear two-dimensional (strip theory) method. The research will conclude with the establishment of guidelines and recommendations for hull structural improvements and rule developments for high speed ships.

Project Team

Associated Publications