CASE STUDY OF DAMAGE STABILITY CRITERIA OF MERCHANT VESSELS AND WARSHIPS

摘要

While there is plenty of data to perform a complete assessment of stability after damage in merchant vessels,unfortunately that is not the case for warships. There are different regulations of damage stability that could be used forsuch exercise, for example the Design Data Sheet, the Naval Ship Code, and within the SOLAS, the StockholmAgreement, where water on deck is included.It is well known that regulations ruling stability after damage in warships are more demanding (in general) thanmerchant rules in terms of water on deck, however the Stockholm Agreement provides greater reliability for calculatedresults in civilian vessels, compared to those used by warships.Warships are different and more interesting from the stability point of view, as they have a more detailed study than theircivilian counterparts. The calculations are also more exhaustive and additionally they study large groups of loadingconditions. To corroborate this point a comparative study has been made of results between different Navies.This paper provides a study of the stability criterion for the US and British Navies, a study of the new NSC criterion(Classification Society-driven approach) and an analysis of SOLAS from its origins until the new probabilistic approachgoing through all the amendments that relate to stability.The paper concludes with the introduction of a series of comparisons between criteria used by the Navies to maintain theintegrity of its basic approach, and increase the similarities with the criterion of IMO, such as the calculation of water ondeck from the Stockholm Agreement. These comparisons lead to interesting conclusions regarding how current criteriaused by the Navies could be enormously improved just with a few minor changes.