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The article discusses safety and sustainability issues pertaining to global shipping industry, particularly, the shipbreaking, the process of dismantling end of life vessels. Topics covered include the migration of the shipbreaking industry to the global south, the controversies revolving around beaching, a method of ship recycling carried out only in Bangladesh, India and Pakistan and the international laws governing shipbreaking. The policy recommendations are also discussed.

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Abstract A series of small-scale specimens of unstiffened and stiffened web girders were designed and tested by applying local imposed deformations by an indenter. These quasi-static experiments were to investigate the crushing behaviour of vertical stiffeners in web girders. Finite element (FE) models are established to calculate the crushing deformations and to analyse the energy absorbing mechanisms. Good agreement is observed between the numerical results and experimental measurements, leading to the conclusion that the FE model developed in the current investigation can be effectively used to predict the crushing behaviour of ship structures in stranding. It is concluded that the vertical stiffeners play an important role in the crushing resistance of the structures, especially have significant influence on the reaction force. Comparing with the unstiffened web girder, the maximum force measured in the tests increased by 17% and 64% in the stiffened webs with 2 and 3 stiffeners, respectively. Discussions on the effects of friction coefficient, the thickness of stiffener, and the determination of failure criterion using in FE simulations are also included. Highlights • Small scaled specimens of unstiffened and stiffened web girders from a tanker double bottom floor were designed and tested. • A series of experiments were conducted to investigate the crushing behaviour of vertical stiffeners in web girders. • Finite element (FE) models are established to calculate the crushing deformations and energy absorption. • Good agreement is observed between the numerical results and experimental measurements. • It is concluded the vertical stiffeners play an important role in the crushing resistance of the structures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Catenary mooring lines experience liftoff from and grounding on the seabed when undergoing large dynamic motions. Numerical line mooring models account for this interaction using various seabed models and it is known that the action of liftoff and grounding may lead to large dynamic tension fluctuations. These fluctuations may be spurious due to the inability of discretised mooring models to adequately account for the effect of the seabed on the mooring line. In this work, the root cause and conditions that lead to the production of the large dynamic tension fluctuations is determined. The effect of line discretisation and seabed model on the tension fluctuations is investigated using the widely used spring-mattress approach and a modified seabed reaction force model. An in-house mooring code was developed to perform these investigations. For code validation and benchmarking, and to illustrate the existence of the tension fluctuations problem due to nodal grounding in existing mooring line simulation codes, comparisons are made to a commercial software. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2013, the remote Tubbataha Reef UNESCO World Heritage Site, in the western Philippines, experienced two ship groundings within four months: the USS Guardian (USSG), a US military vessel, and the Min Ping Yu (MPY), an illegal Chinese fishing vessel. Here, we present the results of coral disease assessments completed two years post-grounding and recovery patterns monitored annually within these grounding sites. Site assessments were undertaken in three distinct zones: ‘ground zero’, where reef was scoured to its limestone base by direct ship impact; the ‘impact border’, containing surviving upright but damaged, abraded and fragmented colonies injured during ship movement; and undamaged ‘control’ sites, remote from the ship groundings but located on the same atoll. Coral diseases were dominated by white syndromes, and prevalence was an order of magnitude higher within the impact border zones than within the other zones two years after the events. Hard coral cover has steadily increased at a mean rate of 3% per year within the scoured USSG site at a rate comparable to control sites. In contrast, recovery has been negligible within the rubble-dominated MPY site, suggesting that substrate quality strongly influenced recovery processes such as recruitment, as larvae do not survive well on unstable substrates. Long-term recovery trajectories from these two grounding events appeared strongly influenced by movement of the ship during and after each event, and site-specific wave-influenced persistence of rubble and debris. High prevalence of coral disease among damaged but surviving colonies two years post-grounding suggested long-term impacts which may be slowing recovery and creating localized pockets of higher persistent disease prevalence than that of the surrounding population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The globally expanding shipping industry has several hazards such as collision, capsizing, foundering, grounding, stranding, fire, and explosion. Accidents are often caused by more than one contributing factor through complex interaction. It is crucial to identify root causes and their interactions to prevent and understand such accidents. This study presents a detailed review and analysis of fire and explosion accidents that occurred in the maritime transportation industry during 1990–2015. The underlying causes of fire and explosion accidents are identified and analysed. This study also reviewed potential preventative measures to prevent such accidents. Additionally, this study compares properties of alternative fuels and analyses their effectiveness in mitigating fire and explosion hazards. It is observed that Cryogenic Natural Gas (CrNG), Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) and methanol have properties more suitable than traditional fuels in mitigating fire risk and appropriate management of their hazards could make them a safer option to traditional fuels. However, for commercial use at this stage, there exist several uncertainties due to inadequate studies, and technological immaturity. This study provides an insight into fire and explosion accident causation and prevention, including the prospect of using alternative fuels for mitigating fire and explosion risks in maritime transportation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper presents a method of determining, organizing and displaying ship collision avoidance information, which is based on the Collision Threat Parameters Area (CTPA) technique. The method makes it possible to visualize navigational threats as well as possible collision avoidance manoeuvres. The solution is focused on supporting navigation in severe weather conditions. Normally collision avoidance decisions are made taking into account targets' motion parameters, International Regulations for Preventing Collisions at Sea (COLREGS) and navigational obstacles. However, in hard weather conditions each manoeuvre has to be additionally checked to assess whether it is safe in terms of ship's stability. Therefore the proposed method provides four types of information: motion parameters of targets within a given range, combinations of own course and speed which collide with those targets, combinations of own course and speed which would lead to grounding within a specified time and combinations of own course and speed, which could result in stability-related dynamical threats. Optionally it is also possible to display only manoeuvres compliant with COLREGS. A superposition of these types of data enables a navigator to choose an efficient manoeuvre in a situation when possibilities are limited by weather conditions and actual characteristics of the ship stability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper presents a review of experiments and calculation procedures for the resistances of ship structural components subjected to impact loadings. The purpose of the paper is to highlight the importance of large-scale collision and grounding experiments and to discuss the technical difficulties and challenges in analytical, empirical and numerical analyses. Experiments on ship structural components are benchmarks and baselines, used to propose analytical or empirical formulae for the structural energy absorptions and/or to validate numerical analyses considering the actual structural and material characteristics. In recent literature, analytical and numerical calculations provide relatively accurate prediction of the purely plastic responses of ship structures under impact loads, but universal approaches have not been found for fracture predictions. The existing formulae for failure criteria still show limitations when evaluating material fracture in various damage patterns. Recently, semi-analytical approaches have been developed to evaluate the relationship between the absorbed energy and the damaged material volume, taking into account the structural arrangements. It seems that these semi-analytical methods often show better accuracy than the numerical simulations when predicting the experimental results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ship grounding is a major maritime hazard that poses great consequences. Risk and sustainability associated with ship grounding need to be rationally assessed for a safe and sustainable maritime traffic. This paper presents a probabilistic risk analysis of ship grounding hazard considering damage caused by bottom penetration. Sustainability is introduced for ship grounding risk analysis for a synthesized assessment of the damage consequences. Sustainability indicators assess the economic, social, and environmental performance following a hazard event. In terms of ship grounding incident this includes the ship damage repair, operational delay, cargo loss, injury or fatality of crew, and environmental impact such as clean-up of oil spill. The economical, social, and environmental metrics are evaluated separately and then converted into an integrated monetary metric. Utility function that can incorporate attitude towards risk taking is used in the analysis for decision making purposes in risk control. The proposed approach is illustrated using a hypothetical oil tanker grounding in the Delaware Bay region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objectives of the present paper are to identify the hazard of ship grounding; where a ship runs on a rock with a forward speed, and to select a set of credible scenarios with a limited number that can still represent all possible situations of the accidents. For this purpose, the statistics of ship grounding accidents recorded by authorities for the period of 46 years during 1970–2016 are collated. An extensive analysis is undertaken to examine the statistical characteristics in association with random variables influencing the consequence of grounding. A total of six parameters, namely ship's forward speed, ship's trim angle, rock tip eccentricity, rock length, rock width and rock height are considered as random variables where the displacement or mass of the grounded ship is fixed. Each of the random variables is then formulated with a probability density function. A sampling technique is applied to the probabilistic selection of the grounding scenarios which are to be used for the consequence analysis within the framework of quantitative risk assessment. Important insights developed from the present study are discussed. Details of the analyses are documented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper presents an influence of the navigational model change on the structural and qualitative changes of the ships groundings in international shipping. Data was analyzed based on reports of 75 seagoing vessels in international shipping in the 2000-2014. This study is an attempt to assess the causes of ships groundings in the new integrated navigation model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The prototypes of unmanned merchant vessels are expected to come into service within the coming years. The main line of argument supporting their introduction pertains to the increase in navigational safety, which is expected to be achieved by reducing the frequency of human-related accidents on board ships, by removing the crews. On the other hand, the response of unmanned ship to potential accidents is still uncertain. With enthusiasm on one side and apprehension on the other, the literature lacks an objective study on the effect of unmanned ships on safety of maritime transportation. This paper constitutes an attempt to bridge the aforementioned gap by applying a framework based on what-if analysis to a hundred maritime accident reports. The aim of the analysis is to assess whether the accident would have happened if the ship had been unmanned, and once the accident had happened - would its consequences have been different. The results obtained reveal that the occurrence of navigational accidents (e.g. collision, grounding) can be expected to decrease with the development of unmanned ship. However the extent of consequences resulting particularly from non-navigational accidents (e.g. fire, ship loss due to structural failure) can be expected to be much larger for the unmanned ships when compared to the conventional ones. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Groundings are frequently occurring accidents that pose a serious risk in inland waterways. This paper proposes a flexible decision-support solution for grounded ships in the Yangtze River. The basis of the proposed method is to develop an influence diagram based on a three-layer decision-making framework, to consider the effectiveness of the intervention measures by adding two nodes and establishing the associated conditional probability tables, and to merge the influence diagram and the intervention measures as a flexible decision-support solution. The merits of the proposed method include the intuitive representation of how the influencing factors affect the alternatives using a graphical structure, the flexibility to implement and to consider the intervention measures for grounded ships, and the ability to deal with uncertainty in both numerical data and qualitative information. The results of the case study showed that it is unanimous with the real situations and the intervention measures should be considered to make effective and accurate decision-making for grounding ships. Consequently, the method presented in this paper provides a practical and flexible decision-support solution for grounded ships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scaled models are important in marine engineering since it is prohibitive testing of actual ship size. However, the crashworthiness analysis on marine structures in reduced scale is not an ordinary research topic given the scientific and technical limitations surrounding this type of practice. It is reported here a series of collision tests of marine structures in reduced scale. These experiments are used to validate the subsequent finite element analysis. The scaled shiplike specimens were built from metallic thin-walled structures in a reduced scale of 1:100 taken into account shipbuilding processes analogous to that used in real scale marine structures. The experiments include scaled collision tests of a T cross-section beam, head-on collision of an oil tanker against a rigid wall, ship grounding and collision between two oil tankers. It is discussed the influence of different numerical and experimental aspects inherent to experimental impact tests of marine structures. This includes the mechanical properties of the materials, slight misalignments in test arrangements, failure criteria, weld joints and sloshing effect of ship cargo. These aspects are thoroughly analyzed and discussed here so bringing new insights in the modeling of marine structures subjected to collision events using reduced scale experiments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studying the process of hull interaction with the seabed is necessary to improve the reliability of ship hull structures when beached on an unimproved shoreline. The pressure the bow of a landing craft experiences during beaching operations is affected by a variety of factors that must be understood to develop a general theory of the hull to ground interaction. Currently the rules of classification society Det Norske Veritas (DNV) have an established formula for calculating the pressure on the bow of a landing craft, due to ground contact, see Ref. 1. The DNV formula uses the vessel displacement and contact area to determine the pressure experienced, by the hull structure, however, the characteristics of the hull and the shoreline must also be considered to analyse the interaction fully. The shape and coefficient of friction of the hull in the contact region as well as the load bearing properties, and slope angle, of the shoreline soil and vessel speed, at grounding, must be accounted for along with the hull displacement to achieve this. This paper describes and documents a full-scale experiment to measure structural deformation experienced in the bow sections of a real landing craft (hereafter referred to as 'the test vessel') due to shoreline grounding. Pressure on the hull, due to contact with the shore, is calculated by analysing the deformation of the test vessel's hull construction taking into account the stiffness of its bottom structure. The test vessel is a coastal ship, normally operated under moderate conditions; that does not sustain significant structural damage while beaching. In normal operation, the test vessel is loaded with 3-4 passenger cars of moderate weight, accounting for ~ 30% of the design load capacity, 6t of the 20t capacity. Similar vessels usually exhibit systemic damages of the bottom structure due to the operation in more severe conditions, under full load. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the prediction of the total resistance of an intact and damaged ship model using the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) technique. The study is performed on the model of a tanker with a large hole in the bottom of the hull. The damage is based on statistical data on ship grounding accidents and the chosen hole size and location in the midship area represents its plausible size and location due to grounding. Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) equations with the volume of fluid (VOF) surface capturing technique are employed to solve the flow around the steadily advancing model of a damaged ship in calm water. The experiments, both on an intact and a damaged ship model that were carried out in the towing tank of the Brodarski Institute in Zagreb, Croatia, are used to evaluate the results. The numerical results are in a good agreement with the experimentally obtained results. The significant average increase of 27% in total resistance due to the altered flow around the hole and inside the flooded tanks can be observed for the analysed case. The study shows that the proposed CFD model and settings provide a good prediction of the total resistance together with the flow both around the damaged hull and inside the flooded tanks of the damaged tanker. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

High profile collision and grounding incidents show that safety standards for ships need improvement to ensure ship survivability and reduce the potential for loss of life. An experimental investigation into the influence of floodwater, and transient flooding on the motions and structural response of a ship hull following a grounding incident is presented. Results show that floodwater can have a significant effect on the magnitude of ship responses; testing of the transient flooding case provides the opportunity to quantify the magnitude of these changes as well as the time to flood by provision of intact and flooded data during a single test. The movement of the floodwater free surface shows some substantial second order sloshing effects close to the ship peak response, but little movement in higher frequency waves. Comparisons to classification design rules indicate that there is scope for further assessment of safety margins, including investigation of global responses in conjunction with any local loading due to the presence of floodwater. Future work will look at improving the modelling of the floodwater free surface and carrying out further transient flooding testing in order to better quantify the effect of a ship grounding incident on the survivability of a vessel. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this study is to provide a real-time continuous fuzzy fault tree analysis model for dynamic environment to prevent undesired events in the complex, vague, complicated, and uncertain systems. In fault tree analysis methods, occurrence probability of an undesired event (i.e. marine accidents) is computed by using statistical, extrapolation, and expert judgement methods . In the proposed method, instant data is received by sensors, run through the algorithms, and the probabilities of risk occurrence are computed continuously. Real-time sensor systems (Automatic radar plotting aid radar, bridge navigational watch alarm system, etc.) of a ship are used to validate this model by analysing the fault trees of collision and grounding. The tests prove that this model is successful for handling the trade-offs and providing continuous improvement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ship collisions and groundings are highly nonlinear and transient, coupled dynamic processes involving large structural deformations and fluid structure interactions. It has long been difficult to include all effects in one simulation. By taking advantage of the user-defined load subroutine and the user common variable, this article implements a model of hydrodynamic loads based on linear potential-flow theory into the nonlinear finite element code LS-DYNA, facilitating a fully coupled six degrees of freedom (6DOF) dynamic simulation of ship collision and grounding accidents. Potential-flow theory both with and without considering the forward speed effect is implemented for studying the speed influence. With the proposed model, transient effects of the fluid, global ship motions, impact forces, and structural damage can all be predicted with high accuracy. To the authors' knowledge, this is the first time the fully coupled 6DOF collision and grounding simulations are carried out with linear hydrodynamic loads for transient conditions but without simplification of collision forces. The proposed method is applied to calculations of an offshore supply vessel colliding with a rigid plate and with a submersible platform. The results are compared with a decoupled method and discussed with emphasis on the influence of different initial velocities. The proposed method is capable of predicting both the 6DOF ship motions and structural damage simultaneously with good efficiency and accuracy; hence, it will be a very promising tool in the application to ship collision and grounding analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most of the risk models for ship-grounding accidents do not fully utilize available evidence, since it is based on accident statistics and expert opinions. The major issue with such kinds of models is their limitation in supporting the process of risk-management with respect to grounding accidents, since they do not reflect the reality to the extent required. This paper presents an evidence-based and expert-supported approach to structure a model assessing the probability of ship-grounding accidents, to make it more suitable for risk-management purposes. The approach focuses on using evidential data of ship-grounding accidents extracted from the actual accident and incident reports as well as the judgement elicited from the experts regarding the links and probabilities not supported by the reports. The developed probabilistic model gathers, in a causal fashion, the evidential contributing factors in ship-grounding accidents. The outcome of the model is the probability of a ship-grounding accident given the prior and posterior probabilities of the contributing factors. Moreover, the uncertainties associated with the elements of the model are clearly communicated to the end-user adopting a concept of strength-of-knowledge. The model can be used to suggest proper risk-control-measures to mitigate the risk. By running uncertainty and sensitivity analyses of the model, the areas that need more research for making educated decisions are defined. The model suggests the high-level critical parameters that need proper control measures are complexity of waterways, traffic situations encountered, and off-coursed ships. The critical area that calls for more investigation is the onboard presence of a sea-pilot. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the results of ongoing research efforts aimed at the theoretical development and practical implementation of a probabilistic framework for regulatory assessment of ship survivability following grounding accidents, with particular attention to passenger vessels. In the envisioned framework, the probabilities of flooding of a compartment, or a group of compartments, i.e. the so-called “p-factors”, are determined using a flexible and easily updatable direct non-zonal approach. The assessment of the conditional ship survivability, on the other hand, is based on the SOLAS “s-factor”. The general framework is described, together with implementation details in the specific case of bottom grounding. Testing results, carried out using a specifically developed software tool, are also reported. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Risk analysis methods gain more and more acceptance as decision support tools to analyze and reduce risks in engineering applications. Integration of these techniques leads to more reliable and realistic solutions. This paper proposes an integrated methodology to identify and evaluate driving factors like geographical locations at the time of the incident and failure modes causing fatality for cargo ships. The authors aim to develop a risk method for cleaner and safer maritime transport at coast and open seas of Turkey. The formal safety assessment (FSA) based approach combines fuzzy set theory (FST), ordered weighted geometric averaging operator (OWGA) and decision making trial and evaluation laboratory technique (DEMATEL). A case study is carried out to determine the most common causes of unintentional damages on cargo ships at coasts and open seas of Turkey. Finally, some conclusions and suggestions are drawn concerning the needs to reduce the risks and improve certain safety measures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Safety is always critical aspect for marine industry since there are numerous perils at sea and those may result loss of ship, environment pollution, human injury and even loss of life. The studies show that the most of marine accidents are due to decision error (Chauvin et al., 2013) as the human factors are one of the main contributory factors of marine accident particularly grounding of ships at sea. In this context, maritime authorities struggle to decrease marine accidents at sea by enforcing rules and regulations. However, the marine accidents are still on-going. This paper primarily deals with potential navigational contingencies in particular grounding incident by proposing a hybrid accident analysis method to enhance safety in marine industry. The hybrid approach basically incorporates Accident Analyse Mapping (AcciMap) and Analytical Network Process (ANP) methods to analyse causes of marine accidents analytically. Whilst AcciMap analyses marine accident causes schematically, the ANP technique weights them analytically which can be obtained from the synthesised supermatrix. The proposed hybrid approach is demonstrated with a real-case grounding incident at sea. Thus, prominent accident causes are revealed and necessary preventive measures are proposed in advance. Consequently, the study is expected to contribute maritime safety as well as prevent grounding accidents at sea by encouraging maritime safety engineers and ship operators. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a set of analytical expressions for the calculation of damage opening sizes in tanker groundings. The simplified formulas were given for the grounding force, longitudinal structural damage and the opening width in the inner and outer plating of a tanker's double bottom. The simplified formulas derived are based on a set of numerical simulations conducted with tankers of different dimensions- 120, 190 and 260 m in length. The simulations were performed for five penetration depths and for several rock/ground topologies. The formula for the horizontal grounding force was derived provided the grounding force is proportional to the contact area and the contact pressure. By use of regression analysis it was shown that the contact pressure for any combination of ship and rock size can be expressed with a single normalized polynomial. The actual contact pressure was found by scaling the normalized pressure with the structural resistance coefficient. Given the formulation for the normalized contact pressure, the actual contact force for a ship can be found as a product of average contact pressure and the contact area. The longitudinal length of the damage was evaluated based on the average contact force and the kinetic energy of the ship. The damage opening widths in the outer and inner bottom of the ship were derived separately for two ranges of relative rock sizes as they have strong influence on the deformation mode. The damage widths were given as a function of rock size, penetration depth and double bottom height. To improve the prediction of the onset of the inner bottom failure, a critical relative penetration depth as a function of the ratio of the rock size and the ship breadth was established. Comparison to the numerical simulations showed that the derived simplified approach describes the horizontal grounding force and the damage length well for the penetration depths above 0.5 m. For the range of specified relative rock sizes, the damage width in the inner and outer bottom deviates from numerical simulations approximately up to 25%, which was considered sufficient for the analyses where rapid damage assessment is needed. Comparison was also made to real accidental damage data and to the results of several simplified formulas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents study of 115 grounding accident reports from the Safety Investigation Authority of Finland and Marine Accident Investigation Branch of the UK, as well as 163 near-miss grounding reports from ForeSea and Finnpilot incident databases. The objective was to find the type of knowledge that can be extracted from such sources and discuss the usability of accident and incident reports for evidence-based risk modeling. A new version of Human Factors Analysis and Classification System (HFACS) is introduced as a framework to review the accident reports. The new positive taxonomy as Safety Factors, which are based on high level positive functions that are prerequisite for safe transport operations, is used for reviewing the incident reports. Accident reports are shown as a reliable source of evidence to extract the most significant contributing factors in the events. Mandatory incident reports are considered useful for understanding the effective barriers as risk control measures. Voluntary incident reports, though, are seen as not very reliable in their current form to be used for evidence-based risk modeling. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Structural life assessment periodically evaluates the state and condition of a structural system and provides recommendations for possible maintenance actions or the end of structural service life. It is a diversified field and relies on the theories of fracture mechanics, fatigue damage process, probability of failure, and reliability. With reference to naval ship structures, their life assessment is not only governed by the theory of fracture mechanics and fatigue damage process, but by other factors such as corrosion, grounding, and sudden collision. The purpose of this series of review articles is to provide different issues pertaining to structural life assessment of ships and ocean structures. Part I deals with the basic ingredients of the theory of fracture mechanics, which is classified into linear elastic fracture mechanics and elasto-plastic fracture mechanics. The amount of energy available for fracture is usually governed by the stress field around the crack, which is measured by the stress intensity factor. The value of the stress intensity factor, which depends on the loading mode, is evaluated by different methods developed by many researchers. The applications of the theory of fracture mechanics to metallic and composite structures are presented with an emphasis to those used in marine structures. When the inertia of relatively large pieces of a structure is large enough that the correct balancing of the energy of fracture requires the inclusion of kinetic energy, then the dynamic nature of fracture dominates the analysis. For a crack that is already propagating, the inertial effects are important when the crack tip speed is small compared with the stress wave velocities. This fact has been realized in the theory of fracture mechanics under the name of dynamic fracture and peridynamic. In essence, peridynamic replaces the partial differential equations of classic continuum theories with integro-differential equations as a tool to avoid singularities arising from the fact that partial derivatives do not exist on crack surfaces and other singularities. A brief overview of fracture dynamics and peridynamics together with damage mechanisms in composite structures is presented. The limitations of fracture mechanics criteria are also discussed. Life assessment of ship structures depends on the failure modes and the probabilistic description of failure, which are addressed in Part II. Life assessment of ship structures depends on the failure modes and the probabilistic description of failure. In view of structural parameter uncertainties, probabilistic analysis requires the use of reliability methods for assessing fatigue life by considering the crack propagation process and the first passage problem, which measures the probability of the exit time from a safe operating regime. The main results reported in the literature pertaining to ship structural damage assessments resulting from to slamming loads, liquid sloshing impact loads of liquefied natural gas in ship tankers, and ship grounding accidents, and collision with solid bodies are discussed in Part III. Under such extreme loadings, structural reliability will be the major issue in the design stage of ocean structures. The treatment of extreme loading on ship structures significantly differs from those approaches developed by dynamicists. Environmental effects on ship structures play a major factor in the life assessment of ocean systems. In particular, these effects include corrosion and hydrogen embrittlement. Part IV is devoted to a ship's life assessment resulting from corrosion and hydrogen embrittlement. Because structural components made from aluminum and its alloys are vital to the ship and aerospace industries, the influence of environment on aluminum structures and the means of corrosion control and monitoring in both aluminum and nonaluminum metals are presented. Hybrid ships consist of a stainless steel advanced double-hull center section, to which a composite material bow and/or stern is attached. Such structures require strong joints between the composite and the steel parts. Some of the difficulties with joining composites and metal are related to the large difference in mechanical properties such as stiffness, coefficient of thermal expansion, etc., between the adherents and the large anisotropy of composites. Such differences generally lead to large stress concentrations and weak joints. Fatigue crack growth, stress concentrations resulting from details, joints, and fasteners are addressed in Part V. Fatigue improvement in welded joints is considered one the major tasks of this part. Brittle fracture of hull structures causes serious structural damage and this motivated the ship structure community to develop some means to prevent brittle cracks from occurring. The basic principle behind the use of a crack arrester is to reduce the crack-driving force below the resisting force that must be overcome to extend a crack. The crack arrestor can be as simple as a thickened region of metal or may be constructed of a laminated or woven material that can withstand deformation without failure. Part VI provides different approaches of passive crack control in the form of crack arresters to stop crack propagation before it spreads over a structure component. Crack arresters used in ship structures and pipelines are described for both metal and composite materials. This six-part review article is by no means exhaustive and is based on over 1800 references. It does not address the structural health monitoring, which constitutes a major task in the structural diagnostic process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ship traffic is the factor that presents in almost all of the existing grounding risk models. It is considered to be one of the main factors affecting the expected frequency of ship groundings. This is mostly accepted by experts as common sense. However, there is no research available on the actual dependency between ship traffic and grounding accidents. In this paper, we conduct a study aimed at determining the statistical dependency between the density and distribution of traffic, the number and frequency of grounding accidents and the dependency between the complexity of waterways and an actual accident. For this purpose we utilise statistical analysis of maritime traffic, obtained from Automatic Identification System (AIS) data and grounding accidents, enhanced with the expert elicitation techniques delivering the waterway complexity index. The sea area under investigation is the Gulf of Finland. The results show statistical dependency between frequency of grounding and waterway complexity as well as the traffic distribution. However, the study does not reveal any significant dependency between grounding and traffic density. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The treatment of ship impacts and collisions takes different approaches depending on the emphasis of each discipline. For example, dynamicists, physicist, and mathematicians are dealing with developing analytical models and mappings of vibro-impact systems. On the other hand, naval architects and ship designers are interested in developing design codes and structural assessments due to slamming loads, liquid sloshing impact loads in liquefied natural gas tanks and ship grounding accidents. The purpose of this review is to highlight the main differences of the two disciplines. It begins with a brief account of the theory of vibro-impact dynamics based on modeling and mapping of systems experiencing discontinuous changes in their state of motion due to collision. The main techniques used in modeling include power-law phenomenological modeling, Hertzian modeling, and non-smooth coordinate transformations originally developed by Zhuravlev and Ivanov. In view of their effectiveness, both Zhuravlev and Ivanov non-smooth coordinate transformations will be described and assessed for the case of ship roll dynamics experiencing impact with rigid barriers. These transformations have the advantage of converting the vibro-impact oscillator into an oscillator without barriers such that the corresponding equation of motion does not contain any impact term. One of the recent results dealing with the coefficient of restitution is that its value monotonically decreases with the impact velocity and not unique but random in nature. Slamming loads and grounding events of ocean waves acting on the bottom of high speed vessels will be assessed with reference to the ship structural damage. It will be noticed that naval architects and marine engineers are treating these problems using different approaches from those used by dynamicists. The problem of sloshing impact in liquefied natural gas cargo and related problems will be assessed based on the numerical and experimental results. It is important for vessel designers to determine the capacity of ships to resist random slamming loads, sloshing loading impact, grounding accidents and ships collisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights: [•] A general method for developing a Bayesian Network (BN) for maritime transport. [•] In depth analysis of 93 accident investigation reports. [•] Inclusion of human and organizational factors, focus on human fatigue. [•] The marginal probability of human fatigue at bridge is calculated to 0.23. [•] A fatigued bridge has about 16% higher probability of grounding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses a court case Arigo v. Swift, considered as the quintessential environmental lawsuit in the history of the Philippines, implicating the nexus between military activity and the environment. Topics discussed include the grounding of the U.S. naval ship USS Guardian at the Tubbataha Reefs National Park (TRNP), the constitutional rights of the residents of the provinces surrounding the Tubbataha Reef, and the citizen's suit under the TRNP Act of 2009.

The paper presents the selection of ship sailing routes in the coastal area according to the probability of grounding. Taking into consideration the dangers in the heading direction as well as the vicinity and length of the coastline parallel to the ship course, the paper will try to propose a model for choosing the sailing route with the smallest possibility of grounding. The estimation of the dangers on the routes will be based on the potential number of groundings; human factor will not be taken into account, assuming that a human error on each route will have the same probability of occurrence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This paper presents a comparison with experimental data of the resistance of stiffened panels to penetration damage. It also carried out comparisons between numerical simulations and experiments investigating the grounding of ships. The finite element method and FEA software are used to predict penetration damage and this modelling simulation is then extended to investigate damage to a ship’s double bottom structure in different grounding scenarios. The progressive failure of the double bottom is investigated in terms of plastic deformation and also the evolution of damage including material rupture. Three different levels of complexity were used in modelling the double bottom structure concerning the inner and outer shell plating; longitudinal stiffeners in the shell plating, and structures with stiffening in longitudinal floors. The analysis was carried out in the ABAQUS explicit code. The results presented include the crushing force as a function of time, an investigation of the energies involved in the plastic deformation and rupture of the double bottom structure, and comparisons with experimental data where available. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: A Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) tanker will encounter many hazards during its operations and some of them will have high risk levels such as grounding and collision in regions of population concentrations in restricted water. The accident of LNG ships in grounding was reported in narrow channel due to manoeuvring difficulties derived from ship–bank interaction. This paper examines manoeuvring performance of a LNG tanker hull form, which was modified to be fitted by fins while taking into account the ship bank interaction effects. A series of model experiments were conducted in order to measure the hull hydrodynamic forces/moments and ship–bank interaction forces/moments using a series of captive model tests. A time domain simulation program including ship steering autopilot has been developed to study the manoeuvring trajectories for full loading condition. The results of simulations show that the ship–bank interaction effects, fitting fins and enlarging rudder size have significant influence on the manoeuvring capability of the LNG ship in restricted water. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Ship traffic is one of the factors that is presented in almost all of the existing grounding models, and is considered as one of the affecting factors on the likelihood of grounding accident. This effect in grounding accident is mostly accepted by the experts as a common sense or simply by just generalizing the ship-ship collision cases to grounding accidents. There is no available research on the actual causal link between the ship traffic and grounding accident in the literature. In this paper, authors have utilized the statistical analysis on historical grounding accident data in the Gulf of Finland between the years 1989 and 2010 and the AIS data of the same area in year 2010, as the source of ship traffic data, to investigate the possible existence of any correlation between the ship traffic and the grounding accident. The results show that for the studied area (Gulf of Finland) there is no correlation between the traffic density and the grounding accident. However, the possibility of the existence of minor relation between the traffic distribution and grounding accident is shown by the result. This finding, however, needs further investigation for more clarification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to the complexity of activities which can generate cargo surveys in respect of transport, maritime ships can be in such situations that will not allow carrying out activities onboard under normal conditions, leading to damages to the ships or carried cargo, thus entailing litigations between participants in such transport. Damages approach have had a spectacular evolution, so that the currently requested survey reports for the construction and settlement of such litigations became far-reaching and specialized. This paper will point out elements of damages going under concepts of general and particular averages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ship structures cover a range of constructions varying from fast vessels built of front edge technology materials to very large commercial ships built according to traditional procedures and of conventional constructional steels. With collision, grounding and fire as accidental loads, it is clear that the field of Rational Design of Ship Structures for Accidental Loads could focus on highly varying topics. Many problems within the field of accidental loads in marine engineering are still unsolved and it is true that even if many resources are allocated to the field, it will take years, may be even decades, before the marine community can claim to have a fully rational design basis with respect to accidental loads. The purpose of the present paper is to contribute to the understanding of ship grounding events and thus to try to minimize the damages induced to the marine environment as a result of a grounding event. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Because a lot of ships involved in grounding accidents have caused severe environmental damages of sea areas, the prevention of groundings has been so important that several counter measures such as double hull or Electronic Chart Display and Information System (ECDIS) were developed and equipped to ships. To develop effective measures against grounding, the assessment of risks associated with groundings of ships is required. For the risk assessment, an accurate estimation of grounding frequency is important. This paper presents new models for the estimation of grounding frequency using ship trajectories and seabed geometry in a considered sea area. There are some existing models for the estimation of grounding frequency based on traffic density or position distribution of ships in the lateral direction of a traffic lane. However, these models do not fully consider the rationale behind grounding. The rationale is that unlike collision, most of the grounding accidents occurred by deviation from the planned route and grounding can be prevented by keeping it. The new models introduced here are based on it. The models are called Model A and Model B. Model A is based on the view that grounding occurs by deviation from a planned route. Model B is based on the view that grounding occurs by deviation from trajectories without groundings, the cause of which is an omission error in the process of following a modified route to cope with a deviation from the planned route. For verification of the models, a number of grounding candidates and a number of groundings were estimated using ship trajectories in Akashi Channel and seabed geometry of the channel by use of them. Moreover by comparing the results with statistics of groundings in the channel, probability of failing to avoid grounding and annual frequency of grounding were estimated by varying some parameters. These estimated values indicate the rationality of the models, even though there still remain some problems to be solved. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A simple method for the rapid assessment of ship bottom structures subjected to grounding over seabed obstructions with large contact surfaces is proposed in this paper. It has been recognised that the shape and size of the seabed obstruction is of crucial importance in relation to the characteristics of bottom damage. Most studies on ship grounding are concerned with ‘rock-type’ sharp obstructions, where plate tearing is the dominating failure mode. However, very few studies are found related to grounding over blunt obstructions with large contact surfaces such as ‘shoals’. Denting rather than tearing is more likely for the bottom plating as observed from actual grounding incidents. The sharp obstruction may cause earlier penetration and result in very unfavourable consequences such as compartment flooding. In contrast, the bottom plating may not fracture when moving over a blunt-type sea floor. But it may threaten the global hull girder resistance and give rise to even worse consequences such as hull collapse. The proposed simple method is established on the basis of a series of closed-form solutions for individual structural members developed from the plastic mechanism analysis. The primary deformation modes for the major bottom structural members are sliding deformation of longitudinal girders, denting and crushing of transverse members and indentation of bottom plating. The effect of friction is considered and estimated in a simple manner. The vertical resistance that governs the vertical ship motion is derived. It is found that the vertical resistance is free of friction. The proposed simple method for bottom strength is verified against large-scale non-linear finite element analyses, where a good correlation is obtained. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A method is introduced to quickly measure the total bending moment and shear force for any ship due to soft groundings. Therefore, the ship design program e4 and the FE program ANSYS are used and coupled. The grounding points or areas are combined with different load cases. These combinations are being considered for different water levels due to tide. The critical combinations that lead to an exceedance of the maximal allowable bending moment and shear force according to classification societies can be determined. The ship is modelled as a rigid body and the sliding phase is not considered. The presented method is verified through existing formulas. Also, the acting forces and moments as well as the sections at risk can be identified. The method is exemplary applied for a container vessel. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]