Bending Moments and Shear Forces in Ships Sailing in Irregular Waves

This paper presents some results concerning the vertical response of two different ships sailing in regular and irregular waves. One ship is a containership with a relatively small block coefficient and with some bow flare while the other ship is a tanker with a large block coefficient. The wave-induced loads are calculated using a second-order strip theory, derived by a perturbational procedure in which the linear part is identical to the usual strip theory. The additional quadratic terms are determined by taking into account the nonlinearities of the exiting waves, the nonvertical sides of the ship, and, finally, the variations of the hydrodynamic forces during the vertical motion of the ship. The flexibility of the hull is also taken into account. The numerical results show that for the containership a substantial increase in bending moments and shear forces is caused by the quadratic terms. The results also show that for both ships the effect of the hull flexibility (springing) is a fair increase of the variance of the wave-induced midship bending moment. For the tanker the springing is due mainly to exciting forces which are linear with respect to wave heights whereas for the containership the nonlinear exciting forces are of importance.