Sloshing interaction in ship collisions—An experimental and numerical study

Sloshing interaction in ship collisions is studied both experimentally and numerically. The rapid change in ship motions resulting from contact loading in collisions initiates violent sloshing inside partially filled liquid tanks on board. Sloshing affects the collision dynamics and reduces the amount of energy available for structural deformations. An understanding of this interaction phenomenon was obtained by a series of model-scale experiments, in which a striking ship, with two partially filled tanks, collided with an initially motionless struck ship without any liquid on board. The influence on the structural deformation of the fluid mass in the tanks and the velocity of the collision was studied. Numerical simulations of the cases were performed, combining a linear sloshing model with a theoretical collision model. The simulation model was validated with experimental results and good agreement was achieved in the case of medium filling levels in the tanks, while correspondingly the deformation energy was overestimated by up to 10% for shallow filling levels.