Crashworthiness characteristic of longitudinal deck structures against identified accidental action in marine environment: a study case of ship–bow collision

Abstract

Rising demand for transportation safety during their operation has become public awareness these days which leads to massive development in navigation and mitigation technologies. However, accidents for various transportation modes, including ship, are still occurring despite this progress. The numbers of involved parameters make accidental phenomena in the maritime environment, namely collision to be the latest concern as its influence on remarkable casualties. This paper aims to analyze ship collision incident which involves cargo carrier and passenger vessel. Structural crashworthiness as the main subject accounting for accidental limit state design and safety assessment is performed using a finite element approach to observe both global and local behaviors of the target ship under the bow impact. Initial prediction indicates that major collision energy is dedicated to destroying the main deck and outer shell. The tendency of the force during the collision period explicitly hints that progressive failure on the deck will continue to take place even if the accidental limit is extended. The behavior of the local member/component of the target ship is also to be presented in the discussion.