Prediction of Structural Response in Grounding - Application to Structural Design

A considerable amount of work has been done during the past ten years to develop methods to predict structural response in collision and grounding. The objective of the research is to improve structural design by taking into account accident loads. To achieve the goal, simplified methods must be available to analyze designs in largely varying accident scenarios. The paper assesses to what extent this goal has been achieved in grounding research and identifies required future work. The past work in structural response in grounding is reviewed. The paper tests an existing simplified method against results from numerical studies, model testing and actual grounding data. It assesses the range of applicability of the method for predicting grounding response in varying grounding scenarios. An evaluation of the relative impact of grounding parameters on damage extents, and a study of the performance of varying structural configurations within the applicability of the simplified method is presented.