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.

To further improve the low-frequency broadband sound absorption capability of the underwater anechoic layer (UAL) on the surface of marine equipment, a novel sound absorption structure with cavities (NSSC) is designed by adding resonators and honeycombs to the traditional sound absorption structure with cavities (SSC). Based on the principle of shear dissipation, the original intention of the design is to allow more parts of the viscoelastic material to participate the dissipation of acoustic energy. The approximate multilayer sound absorption theoretical model based on the modified transfer matrix method is used to verify the accuracy of finite element calculations. In the frequency range of 1100 Hz–10,000 Hz, the sound absorption coefficient (α) of NSSC can reach 0.8. The effects of the presence and size of cylindrical oscillators and honeycomb structures on sound absorption are discussed in detail. The results show that expanding the effective sound absorption range of the damping area of the structure is the key to improve the wideband sound absorption effect. This design concept could guide the structural design of the UAL.

A 3D water entry of a typical bow model of river-to-sea ship is studied experimentally. A large number of systematic experiments have been performed for the bow model with different pitch angles. Considering various pitch angles and impact velocities in the model tests, the slamming pressure distributions on the bottom of the bow are presented and discussed. The measured slamming pressures on the bow are identified in terms of the maximum slamming coefficient. The effects of the pitch angle and impact velocity on slamming pressure are discussed as well, based on the experimental measurements. It is shown that the slamming load on the bottom of the model increases as the pitch angle decreases in most cases. With a higher impact velocity, the coefficient of the maximum slamming pressure is smaller for most of the tested cases.

Operating Offshore Floating Vertical Axis Wind Turbines (OF-VAWT) have the potential to perform well in the deep-sea area. Some researchers gave performance prediction by developing simplified computing models. However, these models have imperfections in considering load and motion nonlinearity, especially in extreme environments. In this work, a numerical model is developed composed of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) and Dynamic Fluid Body Interaction (DFBI) to acquire the aero-hydrodynamic load and performance of OF-VAWT in general and extreme environments. Unsteady Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes (URANS), SST k-ω and Eulerian Multi-Phase (EMP) models are combined to generate a gas-liquid two-phase flow field; the Volume of Fluid (VOF) model is employed to capture free-surface and make numerical wind-wave. DFBI superposition motion technology is proposed for local motion definition and motion solution, and overset with sliding meshes is introduced to achieve the grid motion. The numerical approach is verified by the tunnel and tank experimental data from the available literature. Simulation results of general cases, such as variable wind speed, wave height and wave length, are compared to discuss the effect of environmental parameters on load and performance. Comparison shows that this straight-bladed OF-VAWT is more susceptible to wind speed. Furthermore, the aerodynamic load generated by the shut-down rotor is still significant in extreme environment, which has implications for the development of OF-VAWT controller.

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.

The demand for larger passenger capacity and more entertainment facilities has led to the rapid growth of the cruise tourism market. The superstructure of cruise ships is designed to be plumper, with numerous decks and complex structural forms. To control the weight and the center of gravity, the bending stiffness of the superstructure is always designed to be weaker than that of the main hull, resulting in a stiffness step. Currently, there is no satisfactory method to accurately estimate the influence of the stiffness step between the main hull and superstructure on the structural response of cruise ships. In the present research, an experimental analysis is conducted to investigate the stiffness step between the main hull and superstructure of a typical cruise ship. By comparing the longitudinal stress distribution characteristics with and without the stiffness step with the theoretical results, the influence of the stiffness step on the longitudinal strength is investigated. Furthermore, the maximum stress and the bending efficiency of the superstructure are also discussed. The present research is of reference significance for the structural safety and reliability design of cruise ships.