Fully coupled BEM-FEM analysis for ship hydroelasticity in waves

This paper considers the problem of ship hydroelasticity, which is an important technical issue in the design of ultra-large vessels. For the analysis of fluid-structure interaction problems, a partitioned method is applied. The fluid domain surrounding a flexible body is solved using a B-spline Rankine panel method, and the structural domain is handled with a three-dimensional finite element method. The two distinct methods are fully coupled in the time domain by using an implicit iterative scheme. The numerical results of natural frequency and the motion responses of simple and segmented barges are computed to validate the present method through comparisons with experimental and numerical results. This study extends to the application to two real ships, 6500 TEU and 10,000 TEU containerships, for more validation and also observation on the practicality of the present method. Based on this study, it is found that the present method provides reliable solutions to linear ship hydroelasticity problems. •A fully coupled 3D BEM-FEM for ship structural hydroelasticity is introduced.•Whole-ship 3D FE elements are coupled with a hydrodynamic solver for ship springing in waves.•A direct time integration scheme is applied to solve the strongly coupled fluid-structure interaction.•The developed numerical method is validated systematically, and a real ship is modeled for numerical computation.