A probabilistic method on ship damages

Abstract

Marine accidents especially when considering ship accidents and crashes are addressed here in this paper. In order to identify damage stability in ships and marine vessels, there are basically two main approaches including: deterministic methods, and probabilistic methods. A probabilistic method is used here in this paper and because of probabilistic calculus; statistical data is needed to identify models, methods, etc. IMO data base is used to do analysis and present research results. Probabilistic modeling has been performed by introducing three individual factors which are as follows: a) the probability that one or more than one ship compartments to be flooded (there is no any more longitudinal and/or horizontal subdivision in it), b) the probability of not damaging longitudinal subdivision (if there will be some), c) the probability of not damaging horizontal subdivision (if there will be some). In this research work focus is on the first and second factors that are functions of the location, the length and the width of compartment(s). In order to ease the proposed method and also to generalize the results, nondimensional damage location and nondimensional damage length and nondimensional damage penetration are introduced. Referring to IMO data base, the bilinear functions are used to describe nondimensional damage length and nondimensional location. Completion of these methods and models will lead us to a new formulation for probability of the flooded compartments in ships and vessels and the results will be illustrated to prove the validity of the method