Numerical study on the consequences of different ship collision modelling techniques

Ship collisions are marine accidents that may have catastrophic outcome. Commonly, an orthogonal collision with a fully laden oil tanker at its amidships area is considered. Much less attention is given to collisions affecting struck ship fore and aft part, the effect of struck ship speed, collisions with other floating objects etc. In most of these cases the effect of surrounded water becomes pronounced. Present work aims to investigate the consequences of applying two different realistic ship collision modelling techniques involving fluid-structure interaction (FSI) analysis in LS-Dyna: arbitrary Lagrangian–Eulerian (ALE) technique and rigid body MCOL coupling, using LPG ship and a ferry collision scenario as a study case. First, calibration of ALE parameters was made and then ship collision simulation is performed by ALE technique. In parallel, struck ship hydrodynamic parameters were calculated and collision simulation is performed again using MCOL/LS-Dyna coupling. Then, results are compared and discussed.