ABSTRACT
Before a sideways launching process of a vessel, the motion and stability of the vessel as well as structural loads are to be checked. High loads on the ship’s hull structure at the impact with the water surface can be observed. In this paper the loads resulting on the ship hull of a special purpose vessel are investigated based on model tests of a sideways launching process conducted at a ship model basin. The model tests considered the slipway and did enable a free 6-DOF movement of the ship model. During model tests the pressure were measured at different points of the highly loaded area of the ship hull. Different parameters of the sideways launching process were varied during model tests. This includes the loading condition of the ship, the height of the water level inside the launch basin, the height of the palls and the coefficient of friction between palls and slipway. The influence of each of these parameters on the resulting loads is assessed. In the end, a load model based on these results is derived in the form of a pressure-time function, which is suitable for the use in simulations based on the finite element method (FEM). This load model accounts for the high loads right after the impact of the ship hull with the water surface.
