THE DEVELOPMENT OF NEW TYPE FREE-FALL LIFEBOAT USING FLUID STRUCTURE INTERACTION ANALYSIS

Freefall lifeboats provide a safe alternative to conventional lifeboats for emergency evacuation from ships and offshore platforms. The international regulations require that a lifeboat for free-fall launching should be able to give protection against impact accelerations when it is launched with its full occupants and equipment from at least the maximum designed height. Since the height of offshore structure to the water surface is significantly high, during the water entry phase the acceleration response of the free-fall lifeboat might cause an injury to the occupants. The special hull form design should be applied to reduce the acceleration. The aim of the research is to develop a new type freefall lifeboat for the evacuation system on offshore platform. The new hull form design is proposed and investigated, especially on the acceleration response due to slamming load. The Fluid Structure Interaction (FSI) analysis with the penalty coupling method is used for estimating the acceleration response. The numerical results were compared with the requirements of the IMO regulations.