Fluid-structure interaction (FSI) is one of the most challenging methods, as it involves a strong coupling between fluid flow and structural response. At present, these interactions are primarily studied through advanced numerical investigation and computational modelling. In the area of naval architecture and ocean engineering, accurately predicting the structural response of a ship hull under wave loads is a critical requirement for ensuring the safety and performance of the ship. Conventional methods that treat fluid and structural domains independently fail to capture the coupled behaviour accurately, especially for lightweight composite structures that are more sensitive to hydrodynamic forces. This limitation has driven the increasing use of computational methods to solve the FSI problems with more detail. The motivation for this research is to identify and analyse the high stress areas of composite sandwich ship hull in waves by utilizing two-way FSI coupling between finite element method (FEM) and computational fluid dynamics (CFD). A time domain transient FSI coupled simulation has been performed to study the dynamic response of the ship hull, and to evaluate the critical areas with high stress values under the impact of sea waves at sea state-3. The structural integrity of the ship hull is verified by using failure criteria of composite laminate and foam. The results of the FSI simulation are compared with uncoupled analysis to verify the effectiveness of the fluid-structure coupling model.
Iqbal et al. (2026) studied this question.