Experimental and numerical study of containership responses in severe head seas

An accurate determination of the global load effects in a ship is vital for the design of the vessel. This paper addresses an experimental and numerical study of containership responses in severe head seas. Experimental results were obtained using a flexible model of a containership of newer design. The experiments showed that, taking hull flexibility into account, the fourth and sixth harmonic of the vertical bending moments had a maximum value of between 25% and 50% of the first harmonic. We also demonstrated that hull flexibility can increase the vertical bending moment by up to 35% in sea states relevant for design. Comparisons of moments found experimentally with results from a nonlinear hydroelastic strip theory method showed that the effect of nonlinearities on the rigid body moments was slightly over-predicted in the aft body. The method also tends to over-predict the increase of the bending moments due to hull flexibility. In general however, the numerical results compared reasonably well with the experimental ones.