Investigating the Transient Flooding and Sloshing in Internal Compartments of an ITTC Damaged Ro-Ro Passenger Ferry: Part II—Experimental Analysis

Abstract

Passenger Ro-Ro ferries have proved to be extremely vulnerable regarding their hydrostatic stability when damaged. This is not only due to the design of their car decks. After an abrupt ingress of water caused by a maritime accident, the spaces below the car deck can experience dangerous intermediate flooding stages that might lead the ship to sink. The intermediate flooding stages depend upon hosts of factors that are interdependent. Some of them eventually interact during the flooding. An experimental campaign using the midsection of the PRR02 - ITTC/SiW passenger Ro-Ro ferry was devoted to provide a thorough insight to the flooding physics and to quantify these interactions using a novel-to-ocean-engineering methodology, the so-called DOE method. The physical background and the experimental set up of this campaign are presented in the previous one (OMAE2010-20047). This paper is devoted to presenting the experimental methodology and the first findings. The flooding is found a complex phenomenon in which a strong interaction between water and air occurs, also in coupling with the hydrodynamic efforts. Model tests based on one-factor-at-a-time experiments highlights the importance of the damage area and the time of damage creation in the ship behavior during the transient phase. We advocate the use of the DOE methodology to deal with stability problems and to find a model quantifying the intermediate flooding stages.