Recent developments in ship collision analysis and challenges to an accidental limit state design method

The paper presents a review of the developments in ship collision analysis over the last 10 years and the chal-lenges to an Accidental Limit State (ALS) design method of ships based on collisions. It aims to discuss the technical difficulties in finite element analysis, especially the mesh-dependent material failure criterion, the accuracy of the analytical and semi-analytical formulae and the acceptance criterion in ALS design. In recent literature, various material failure criteria are proposed and validated in the fine-meshed models, but their ac-curacy is not clear in the applications of coarse-meshed models. The analytical calculations provide a relatively accurate prediction of the purely plastic responses of ship structures under impact loads, but a universal approach has not been found for fracture predictions. A semi-analytical method is a good approach in the ALS design, but the accuracy needs further improvements. The technical challenges are summarised in ship collision analysis for accurately assessing the structural damage with numerical and theoretical methods.