Design, construction and testing of a fully elastic ship model for investigating hydro-elastic responses of container ships

Models used in hydro-elastic experiments should not only reflect the geometries of the hull form, but also the elastic characteristics of the prototype. Two types of models have been generally developed for this purpose: segmented and fully elastic models. When scaling sectional properties, most studies have only considered similarity in the vertical bending mode. Container ships may also experience high torsional moments in addition to vertical bending moments, because of their large openings on the deck. To investigate the various hydro-elastic response of container ships, we develop and present a fully elastic ship-shape model in this study. Applying a novel structural design with internal structures resembling a container ship allows the vertical bending, horizontal bending and torsional vibration modes to be similar to those of a prototype container ship. Strain gauges instrumented throughout the model measure the hydro-elastic structural response including vertical bending moment, vertical shear force, and torsional moment. We studied the elastic parameters of the model comprehensively through a series of experiments and further tested the model in different wave conditions and forward speeds through wave experiments. We found the measured global structural responses agree with those of numerical simulations. The methodologies developed in this study provide new insights into how to design a fully elastic model which can be used to investigate the hydro-elastic responses of container ships.