Active Flooding Mitigation for Stability Enhancement in a Damaged RoPax Ship

Abstract

In the framework of the EU project Flooding Accident Response (FLARE), flooding mitigation on a RoPax ship was studied using different active methods to improve ship safety in damage cases leading to a hull breach and flooding. Adding active flooding control systems to ship designs and ships in service, which would mitigate the effects of flooding in a damage case, could be an attractive way to improve ship safety. In order to promote this idea, the effects of such active measures on the ship safety were studied: the choice of them, the required application speed of them, their functionality in waves, the numerical modeling of them, and finally testing them with model scale tests. The following flooding mitigation methods were studied: (1) counter flooding, (2) the recovery of lost buoyancy in a damaged compartment, and (3) deploying a watertight barrier on the trailer deck. This study consists of the numerical simulations carried out with the program HSVA Rolls in chosen damage cases on a current RoPax design, with and without active flooding mitigation measures, and of the following ship model tests based on the a priori computations.