Dynamic stability assessment of damaged passenger/ro-ro ships and proposal of rational survival criteria

A clear tendency of moving from prescriptive to performance based safety regulations is emerging internationally. Introduction of performance standards is seen as beneficial to industry, allowing consideration of alternative designs as well as a rapid implementation of technological innovation. In this respect, the analysis of alternative design solutions, particularly in the case of Ro-Ro ferries, requires the development of a standardized approach to demonstrate compliance with the requirements of intact and damage stability regulations by a combination of physical model experiments and numerical model tests while applying probabilistic techniques in the process of assessing damage survivability. The procedure pertaining to model experiments is described in the SOLAS Regulation II-1/8 and the "Interim Guidance Notes for a Uniform Model Test Procedure" relating to this regulation. This paper concentrates on the development and validation of a mathematical model to be used for numerical model testing and the proposal of rational survival criteria allowing for a probabilistic assessment of the dynamic stability of damaged ships, in a way that could not be simpler for practical applications.