Safety Assessment of Ship Launching Based on Airbags With the Nonlinear Rigidity of Airbags Being Considered

Abstract

Launching based on airbags is an important method of ship launching. However, there has not a scientific method for quantitative assessment on the strength of hull structure and safety of airbags at present. With the increases of tonnage of ships launching on airbags, this problem becomes increasingly apparent and important. With the nonlinear rigidity of air-bags and force equilibrium conditions of ship-hull beam being considered during launching, a method based on full ship FEA was put forward to assess the strength of ship structure and the safety of airbags in this paper. The main contents are as follows: Considering nonlinear rigidity of airbags, a calculation method of rigidity of airbags was studied; Based on the elastic launching calculation, a method of calculating ship motion and force on ship hull was studied with the nonlinear rigidity of elastic foundation being considered; Based on the above condition of ship motions and forces, the stress of hull structure and the force on airbags are calculated by full ship FEA; The safety of a real ship launching based on airbags was assessed, based on the comparison of the results with references, the safety of ship launching by airbags and the reliability of the calculation method in this paper are verified.