Simplified buckling-and-contact-based expansion method for assessment of crashworthiness of double-hulled ship structure

Ship-to-ship collision events can have severe consequences such as loss of life and environmental degradation. For this reason, modern ship designs are required to incorporate a double-hulled structure to prevent inner-hull damage from such events. Using the experimental or numerical method to analyze the crashworthiness of double-hulled ship structures entails much effort, for which reason neither method is easy to adopt at the early design stage. In this paper, an existing simplified method called Ito's method is improved by a new buckling-and-contact-based expansion method. This method can be applied to double-hulled-structure or outer-hull-local-rupture failure mode. The perpendicular bow-to-side collision scenario is assumed for a conservative estimation of damage to a double-hulled structure. The method was verified in the present study by numerical ship collision simulations of several cases. The results for the buckling-and-contact-based expansion method and numerical simulation were similar for a blunt shape of striking body but different for a sharp shape.