FULL-SCALE SEAKEEPING TRIALS OF AN ALL-WEATHER LIFEBOAT

摘要

The Severn class of the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI) has recently undergone extensive sea trials as part of collaborative research with Newcastle University and Lloyd’s Register. The scope of the trials was to investigate the seakeeping behaviour of the craft in real operational conditions. A Severn lifeboat was fitted with a number of sensors to measure hull girder loads and local loads due to wave and slamming. Time-domain and spectral analyses were applied to the data collected and the first results are presented. The Response Amplitude Operators (RAOs) of vertical bending moment are also compared against numerical predictions. As part of a major plan that combines numerical methods and experiments to investigate the sea loads sustained by the structure during operation, the sea trials contribute to validating the wave loads predicted numerically and allow to account for slamming-induced load effects.