A Study on Forced Vibration of Double Bottom Structure due to Whipping on an Ultra Large Container Ship

Abstract

Worldwide expansion of economy has brought about prominent and rapid enlargement of container ships. Their greater beam has caused more flexible double bottom structure, giving rise to concerns about its adverse effect to the ultimate strength of hull girder. To accurately assess the ultimate strength of hull girder, it is essential to precisely grasp how the double bottom structures behave in the actual sea state, in terms of whipping and vibratory response as well as wave frequency response. In this paper, the authors investigated structural behavior of the double bottom of a 14,000 TEU ultra large container ship in long-crested irregular head seas. Firstly, time domain ship motion and wave pressure on the hull surface was obtained through numerical analysis using Rankine source method. Subsequently, the obtained loads were applied to 3-dimensional whole ship finite element model, and time domain elastic responses of all over the hull structures were analyzed using Newmark-β method in terms of both whipping and wave frequency responses. As a result, regarding the wave frequency response, it was found that maximum wave induced upward bending of the midship double bottom structures is exerted almost simultaneously with the maximum wave induced hogging hull girder bending moment. The correlation factors between the double bottom bending and the hull girder bending were about 0.94 around the midship region, and they decreased in the fore and aft region. Regarding the whipping and vibratory response, it was found that large whipping response induces forced vibration of the double bottom structures, especially in the midship region. Because of the higher natural frequencies of the double bottom structures compared with that of whipping, the double bottom structures are excited in the same phase as the hull girder whipping, resulting in superimposed longitudinal stresses in way of the bottom shell plating. From these observations, it can be concluded that the local bending behavior of the double bottom structures adversely affects the hull girder ultimate strength, both in terms of wave loads and whipping loads, and it is necessary to take sufficient care to the double bottom rigidity.