In this study, a novel but simple biomimetic turbulent drag reduction topology is proposed, inspired by the special structure of shark skin. Two effective, shark skin-inspired, ribletted surfaces were designed, their topologies were optimized, and their excellent drag reduction performances were verified by large eddy simulation. The designed riblets showed higher turbulent drag reduction behavior, e.g., 21.45% at Re = 40,459, compared with other experimental and simulated reports. The effects of the riblets on the behavior of the fluid flow in pipes are discussed, as well as the mechanisms of fluid drag in turbulent flow and riblet drag reduction. Riblets of various dimensions were analyzed and the nature of fluid flow over the effective shark skin surface is illustrated. By setting up the effective ribletted surface on structure’s surface, the shark skin-inspired, biomimetic, ribletted surface effectively reduced friction resistance without external energy support. This method is therefore regarded as the most promising drag reduction technique.

The hydroelastic behaviour of a river-sea-going ship hull is analysed experimentally and numerically. A segmented ship model connected by a steel backbone is tested in regular waves, and its high-frequency vibrations such as springing and whipping responses are identified. The hydroelastic response of the ship is numerically calculated using a hydroelastic time domain method based on strip theory, which is extended to include an improved model of the slamming load. The slamming forces in the bow section are determined using the Modified Longvinovich Model (MLM) instead of the Von Karman model. The vertical motions and wave-induced loads are calculated and compared with the experimental results. The response amplitude operators of the vertical loads and the high-order harmonics are analysed under different speeds, showing good agreement with the experiments. The slamming loads on the bow section of a river-to-sea ship are predicted utilizing the MLM model and compared with the Arbitrary Lagrangian Eulerian algorithm by LS-DYNA and with the measured results.

Ship hatch corner is a common structure in a ship and its fatigue problem has always been one of the focuses in ship engineering due to the long–term high–stress concentration state during the ship’s life. For investigating the fatigue life improvement of the ship hatch corner under different shot peening (SP) treatments, a series of fatigue tests, residual stress and surface topography measurements were conducted for SP specimens. Furthermore, the distributions of the surface residual stress are measured with varying numbers of cyclic loads, investigating the residual stress relaxation during cyclic loading. The results show that no matter which SP process parameters are used, the fatigue lives of the shot–peened ship hatch corner specimens are longer than those at unpeened specimens. The relaxation rate of the residual stress mainly depends on the maximum compressive residual stress (σ^RS_max) and the depth of the maximum compressive residual stress (δ_max). The larger the values of σ^RS_max and δ_max, the slower the relaxation rates of the residual stress field. The results imply that the effect of residual stress field and surface roughness should be considered comprehensively to improve the fatigue life of the ship hatch corner with SP treatment. The increase in peening intensity (PI) within a certain range can increase the depth of the compressive residual stress field (CRSF), so the fatigue performance of the ship hatch corner is improved. Once the PI exceeds a certain value, the surface damage caused by the increase in surface roughness will not be offset by the CRSF and the fatigue life cannot be improved optimally. This research provides an approach of fatigue performance enhancement for ship hatch corners in engineering application.