Time domain decision-making support based on ship behavior monitoring and flooding simulation database for on-board damage control

Abstract

In case of serious marine accidents, flooding from collision and grounding can affect the ship's behavior to result in sinking or capsizing in the time domain. To control the emergency, it is necessary that the crew calculate damage stability in the early phase of the accident to ensure the safety of the damaged ship. However, damage stability calculation assumes still water condition and recommends a complicated process for crews in an emergency. For improved estimation of the damaged ship's behavior in a real wave, compared to the existing method of damage stability calculation, wave information such as wave heading angle, significant wave height, and wave periods are to be considered in the damage control decision-making process. As computational simulations require a significant amount of time and entail complex process, a few concepts are introduced to use computational flooding simulation for damage control decision-making in the form of a pre-calculated database. By using the database, lengthy and inaccurate manual calculation can be avoided. Moreover, the database system is comparatively more reliable because it contains only the result of the flooding simulation rather than the simulation engine itself. However, from the occurrence of flooding accident to the completion of damage control, the damaged ship's behavior consistently varied by progressive flooding and waterproofing damage control action. When the damaged ship's behavior differs significantly from the initial prediction based on the flooding simulation database, it is necessary to revise the estimation of damaged ship behavior. To reduce the gap between a real situation and stability calculation result, it is important to repeatedly select a predefined damage scenario based on the computational flooding simulation result database in order to minimize human errors and maximize effectiveness of damage control activities. Consequently, in this study, ship behavior monitoring, and flooding simulation database based on the onboard damage control concept has been investigated. Copyright ？ 2017 by the International Society of Offshore and Polar Engineers (ISOPE).