Fluid-structure interaction analysis of ship-ship collisions

The Arbitrary Lagrangian Eulerian (ALE) fluid-structure interaction (FSI) method is widely used to simulate ship-ship/ship-ice collisions, in which hydrodynamics are incorporated to estimate a more realistic and reliable collision response. The purpose of this paper was to use the ALE FSI method for parametric studies on ship collision results, in which the contact force and the ship motions were calculated simultaneously. Numerical simulations of a collision between two identical ships have been conducted using the ALE FSI analysis technique of the LS-DYNA code, in which the surrounding fluid flow was explicitly modeled. The effects of the forward velocity of the struck ship, the mass of the struck ship and the collision angle on collision response were investigated. Furthermore, the analytical method based on momentum conservation and the constant added mass (CAM) method in which the hydrodynamic effects were treated as a constant added mass were applied to calculate energy dissipation. The results were compared with those in the FSI method. Discussions and conclusions are presented.