Ship impacts: Bow collisions

Abstract The purpose of the paper is to present a basis for the estimation of collision forces between conventional merchant vessels and large volume offshore structures in the form of bridges crossing international shipping routes and gravity-supported offshore installations. The main emphasis is on the presentation of impact loads on fixed offshore structures due to bow collisions. The crushing forces are determined as functions of vessel size, vessel speed, bow profile, collision angles and eccentric impacts. A secondary purpose is to show how such deterministically ascertained analysis results can be integrated into a probabilistic procedure for the design of fixed marine structures against ship collision, based on an accepted maximum annual frequency of severe collision accidents.