Experimental Investigation of Wave-Induced Ship Hydroelastic Vibrations by Large-Scale Model Measurement in Coastal Waves

Ship hydroelastic vibration is an issue involving mutual interactions among inertial, hydrodynamic, and elastic forces. The conventional laboratory tests for wave-induced hydroelastic vibrations of ships are performed in tank conditions. An alternative approach to the conventional laboratory basin measurement, proposed in this paper, is to perform tests by large-scale model measurement in real sea waves. In order to perform this kind of novel experimental measurement, a large-scale free running model and the experiment scheme are proposed and introduced. The proposed testing methodology is quite general and applicable to a wide range of ship hydrodynamic experimental research. The testing procedure is presented by illustrating a 5-hour voyage trial of the large-scale model carried out at Huludao harbor of China in August 2015. Hammer tests were performed to identify the natural frequencies of the ship model at the beginning of the tests. Then a series of tests under different sailing conditions were carried out to investigate the vibrational characteristics of the model. As a postvoyage analysis, load, pressure, acceleration, and motion responses of the model are studied with respect to different time durations based on the measured data.

Experimental Investigation of Wave-Induced Hydroelastic Vibrations of Trimaran in Oblique Irregular Waves

The irregular wave condition, especially the oblique irregular wave condition, is the actual circumstances when trimaran is sailing in sea. In order to identify the characteristic of the wave-induced hydroelastic vibration in irregular waves, as well as investigate the change of vibration in different oblique irregular wave conditions, trimaran model tests were conducted to measure vibrations, wave impact, and motion under different azimuth and wave height. The vibration on main hull, side hull, and cross-desk is measured and analyzed separately to observe the influence of irregular wave in different structural parts. The longitudinal vibration, transverse vibration, and torsion are also included in the model tests measurement to investigate the relationship between these vibration deformation components and parameters of the irregular waves. The wave-induced hydroelastic vibrations and whipping effect is extracted and analyzed to find influence of whipping and springing on the total vibration. Based on the analysis, the dangerous positions and the critical waves condition is introduced to ensure that the subsequent structural strength assessment is more reliable.