Structural loading of cross deck connections for trimaran vessels

This work investigates the fundamental relationships of wave loading on cross deck structures for trimaran vessels. In contrast with a monohull ship, trimaran vessels experience several possible structural loading cases including: longitudinal bending, transverse bending, torsional bending, spreading and squeezing of hulls, inner and outer hull slam pressures, wet deck slam pressures, loading from ship's motions, and whipping of slender hulls. This work investigates wave loading cases that result in transverse and torsional bending of the cross deck structure. The wave loading cases investigated include: side hull troughing and cresting in longitudinal waves, side hull torsion in longitudinal waves, and transverse hogging and sagging. For each of these load cases, a design load using a fully statistical sea state was derived using an analytical model of a trimaran represented by rigidly connected box barges. The design loadings with a reliability index of 5 for almost 500 trimaran configurations were calculated varying main hull length, side hull length, side hull transverse placement, and side hull longitudinal placement. The design loadings were curve fit to a fourth order polynomial in the three independent variables.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2004

Author dc:creator

• Rhoads, Jason L

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• David V. Burke.

• Ocean Engineering.
• Civil and Environmental Engineering.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/33165

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/33165