A Numerical and Experimental Study of Bow Flare Slamming

A numerical method is developed to simulate the bow flare slamming of fast ships. Curved ship body boundary is represented by the Porocity method within the constraints of a rectangular grid system. Numerical simulations are conducted using a cross section of a typical container ship with a large bow flare and the simulations are compared with model experiments. The results of the computed and measured pressure histories are comparable. Conventional slamming theories based on self-similarity, on the other hand, fail to predict the measured pressure on the flare. From the experiments and simulations the authors found that high pressure persists for a long duration of time without any sharp peak on the bow flare. Large scale structural damage might be caused by this pressure since it increases simultaneously over an extensive area on the flare when the upper part of the flare comes into contact with water.