Probabilistic Analysis of the Combined Slamming and Wave-Induced Responses

The success of implementing reliability analysis in structural design depends to a large extent on the ability to combine the loads acting on the structure, and on extrapolating their magnitudes to obtain the extreme value of the total combined load. In this paper, a new theory is proposed to combine the slamming and wave-induced responses of a ship moving in irregular seas. The slamming and wave-induced responses are both considered as stochastic processes, and the properties of the combined response are determined on that basis. The slamming loads alone are considered as a train of impulses of random intensity and random arrival time as has been shown by Mansour and Lozow [1],3 but the dependence between the intensity and arrival time is considered in the stochastic modeling. The extreme value of the combined response is then investigated for use in design applications. An example of application to a cargo ship is given and a sensitivity analysis is conducted to determine how sensitive the results are to some of the important input parameters.