DETERMINATION OF CARGO DAMAGE RISK IN BARGE COLLISIONS USING A GENERALISED MINORSKY MODEL AND MONTE CARLO MODEL

In 1959 V.U. Minorsky proposed a one-dimensional empirical relationship between energy absorbed and quantity of structure damaged in ship collisions. This paper presents a generalisation of this method to include all horizontal plane degrees of freedom, and the model is further developed to account for hull membrane resistance up to the point of hull rupture. The resulting model is used to analyse barge collisions; a large number of scenarios was developed for U.S. navigable waters, and the numbers and types of collision in each accident domain were chosen to match statistically the reported casualties. The results were compared with radioactive material (RAM) cask capabilities in order to estimate the probability of RAM cask damage in a collision.