Estimation of Wave Loading Induced Fatigue Accumulation and Extreme Response of a Container Ship in Severe Seas

Abstract

The hydrodynamic analysis of a 4400 TEU container ship with constant forward speed is carried out by the nonlinear numerical code WASIM in the time domain under severe sea states. Straightforward fatigue estimation is performed using the rainflow counting approach based on simulated time series of stresses. The narrow-band approximation, which has been validated in previous work with good accuracy by full-scale measurement of a 2800 TEU container ship, is implemented to estimate the fatigue damage based on the same responses. It is concluded that a slight deviation from the Gaussian process does not influence the fatigue estimation by narrow-band approximation. In addition, extreme response is defined by the level up-crossing approach. The Gaussian crossing model using Rice’s formula is employed to predict the extreme response based on the responses from above numerical analysis. It shows that the Gaussian model is not suitable for this prediction. A more complicated level crossing model is proposed which is based on the Laplace Moving Average method. Its accuracy in prediction of extreme responses is analyzed and presented with good agreement by means of numerical simulations.