Ship Impact Analysis
In 1997 a bulk cargo carrier was involved in an allision with a mooring Dolphin in the Humbolt Bay, California. The side shell of the fuel oil tank was ruptured which led to an oil spill which in turn cost a fortune to clear up.
As a result of the 8 years of litigation that followed this incident Lupus Engineering Services were contracted by Eagle Lyon Pope Ltd to provide Finite Element Analysis services to simulate the impact in order to determine, from the resulting simulated damage, the likely conditions of impact, by comparrsion with the actual damage observed.
A detailed model of the local ship structure was built. This was attached to a model of the ships skelleton structure. The ship model was then attached to springs which simulated the hydrostatic and hydrodynamic behaviour of the entire ship
Model Building was carried out with FEMGEN. Analysis was carried out using ABAQUS Explicit