Comprehensive Penetration Evaluation Method in Collisions between a Supply Ship and a Semi-Submersible Platform

Collisions between ships and offshore platforms frequently occur, with severe consequences. Predicting the collision depth under different conditions is very important to evaluate the severity of the consequences. Considering the time-consuming numerical simulation problem and the accuracy problems of existing approximation algorithms, this paper proposes a comprehensive approach to estimating penetration depths by obtaining two collision coefficients for specific collision structures based on the partial results of numerical simulations and simplified theoretical analysis. In this study, the collision process between a supply ship with a transverse framing stern and an offshore semi-platform was first numerically simulated based on the explicit dynamic method. The changes in ship velocity, impact force, and energy conversion before and after the collision processes were obtained through numerical simulations of the collisions with different speeds and angles. Then, by combining the external dynamics and numerical results, the analytical results of dissipated energy under other collision conditions were obtained using a simulated restitution coefficient. For the following internal dynamics analysis, according to the failure modes of specific structural components in different regions, an appropriate structural energy absorption formula was combined to obtain the relationship between the penetrations and energy absorption in a particular collision area. According to the friction energy ratio derived by the simulation, the penetration depths in the offshore platform were calculated. The results showed that the deviations between the proposed method and direct simulation results were less than 15% in the cases of a medium- to high-energy collision. It can be concluded that the restitution coefficient and friction energy ratio in different collision conditions can be approximately determined for a specific collision system by typical numerical simulations, thus quickly calculating the penetration depths of other conditions.