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How to know the worst case of damage stability?

Written by Capt Rajeev Jassal on

August 27, 2019

Since the day I have started writing, I get a lot of requests suggesting the topics I

should write on.

But do you know which question I have been asked the maximum number of times?

No prize for guessing.

It is this question.

How to know the worst case of damage stability?

Well, It is today that I decided to write on it in detail and explain it.

Are you ready to read the answer to this most mystic question?

Let dive in.

Requirements of damage stability

A ship that can float cannot always be said to be a safe ship.

It must also be able to remain afloat even after sustaining some amount of damage.

Damage stability calculations are all about getting to know if the vessel will remain

afloat after sustaining some damage on its hull.

That is what SOLAS, MARPOL (For tankers) and IBC code (For chemical tankers)

does.

All these regulations define two things

 the extent of damage that needs to be assumed.
Sustainability criteria for the assumed extent of damage
For the vessel to comply with damage stability, it should be able to achieve the

sustainability criteria after the assumed extent of the damage.

Extent of damage
Let us see the defined extent of damage as per various regulations.

Assumed Extent of damage as per SOLAS

Here is the extent of damage defined in SOLAS for cargo and passenger ships without

a double bottom.
Below is the required extent of damage to be assumed for passenger ships
Damage stability requirements in MARPOL

The required assumed extent of damage defined in MARPOL annex 1 for oil tankers

is as below.
The assumed extent of damage as per IBC code
The required assumed extent of damaged defined in IBC code for chemical tanks is as

below
Damage cases as per the assumed extent of damage
Based on the damage assumption requirements, damage cases are created for the

vessel by the class.

You can see these cases in damage stability calculations, either in loadicator or in

damage stability booklet.

Here are the few of the damage cases from one of the vessel.
Damage stability for each damage case
For the vessel to comply with damage stability requirements, for each damage case,

the vessel must comply with the damage stability requirements under MARPOL annex

1 (for oil tankers) and under IBC code (for chemical tankers)

What does this mean?

Let us take the damage case 201.

In this case, FPTK, 1W(P) and, 1W(S) are assumed to be damaged.

If after this damage, vessel still complied with the damage stability survival

requirements as set in MARPOL, IBC code or SOLAS (as applicable), the ship can be

said to be complying with the damage stability with reference to damage case 201.

These calculations need to be done for each damage case and ship need to be

complying with damage stability survival requirements for each of these damage

cases.

If even one case does not comply then for this stowage vessel will not be complying

with damage stability and we need to make changes to the stowage and again check

for the damage stability.

Of course, manual calculations are not required and lodicator does these calculatio ns

for us.
And after calculations, it just shows us if the for the intended stowage if the vessel is

complying with damage stability or not.

Survival requirements
But what are the required survival requirements?

That is, after the assumed damage under each damage case what all stability

requirements vessel need to fulfill for it to be considered complying with damage

stability?

Here are the survival requirements as per the IBC code.

And here are the survival requirements as per MARPOL.
Although the MARPOL and IBC code requirements are for oil tankers and chemical

tankers respectively, if you look closely there are a lot of similarities in the two

requirements.
Deciding Factors for damage stability compliance
If we need to know the worst case of damage stability, we need to first bring all the

deciding factors on the table.

Let us see which are the deciding factors for damage stability compliance.

Look at the survival requirements as per IBC and Marpol and you would know that

these are

The distance from the waterline to the opening through which progressive
flooding can take place
Angle of heel
range of righting lever curve (GZ curve)
Residual righting lever
The area under the GZ curve
Contrary to the belief of many, GM of the vessel does not represent here as a factor

for deciding the damage stability.

But as the GZ curve and GM of the vessel has a direct relation, we can say that GM

indirectly affects the damage stability.

For the scope of this article, I will not discuss here the relation between GM and GZ. I

will leave that for some other day.

So if there is anything that decides the worst case of damage stability it has to be one

or more of the above factors.

Which one(s) is that? Let us find out.

Right Lever, Range under GZ curve, area under GZ curve

What is GZ and why it is important?

GZ is righting lever. It is the force that brings the ship back when inclined to an angle

by an external force.

In simple words, the centre of gravity (G) of the ship for a particular condition

remains the same.

Whereas the center of buoyancy (B) changes with the heel as the underwater area

would change when the vessel is inclined.

This generates a lever (GZ) that brings the vessel back to normal.
GZ would increase as the angle of heel increases because with an increase in the heel

the center of buoyancy would shift farther from the center of gravity.
GZ curve is the curve drawn for the length of the righting lever (GZ) against the angle

of heel.
The area under the GZ curve at an angle of heel is simply the area of the curve from 0

deg heel to that angle of heel.

The significance of the area under the GZ curve is that it represents the amount of

work required to bring the ship to that angle of heel.

In other words, it will also be the force available to bring the ship back to its original

position or the force available to counter the external force that is causing the ship to

heel.

GZ and damage stability

So when a ship is damaged and is arrived at equilibrium, one thing we want is it to

have some dynamic stability to withstand the usual weather conditions.

In simple words, in damaged conditions, if the vessel does not have any dynamic

stability then a slight increase in the heel due to weather conditions can capsize the

vessel.

The minimum dynamic stability required after the assumed damage cases is defined in

MARPOL and IBC.

I do not have the calculations to show how severe weather conditions the vessel can

survive with these minimum values required as per MARPOL and IBC code.

But we can believe that IMO came to these values to ensure that the ship can

withstand normal weather conditions at sea.

The distance from the waterline to the opening through which progressive
flooding can take place
Apart from GZ and related criteria, there are one more criteria that are required to be

fulfilled for the vessel to comply with damage stability.

This is…

“The distance from the waterline to the opening through which progressive flooding

can take place”.

And it is required that

The final waterline, taking into account the sinkage, heel, and trim, shall be below the

lower edge of any opening through which the progressive flooding can take place.

So after the damage and when the vessel has arrived at the equilibrium, the openings

like air pipe and other openings that are not water-tight must be above the water line

considering

it does not apply to the opening of the compartments that are already
flooded
if any opening is below the waterline, the compartment needs to be
assumed to be flooded for damage stability calculations.
So if you note, a small distance of even 5cms between the waterline and the opening is

considered in compliance.

What if we have a swell of more than a few meters?

Even when we are complying with the damage stability requirements, the

compartment can get flooded in this case and everything changes.

GZ and other values that were complying with damage stability with this compartment

intact will now change and may not comply anymore.

The worst case of damage stability

Finally, I come to the concluding part.

The damage stability requirements have defined the minimum required criteria for

each element.

Except for the distance of waterline from opening through which progressive flooding

can take place.

This is a critical factor too.

If the distance is too small, the vessel will still comply with the requirements but the

whole scenario will change if the compartment gets flooded through this opening

because of weather conditions.

So the worst case of damage stability is the one that has the least distance from the

waterline to the opening through which progressive flooding can take place.

Example of the worst case of stability

I know now you would like to see an example for the worst case of stability.

Let us take this as step by step.

Critical openings

The first thing we need to know is the critical opening for the ship.

These are the openings through which progressive flooding can take place and these

are identified by the classification society.

If you are on a vessel, do some homework to find the list of these openings. These

must be either in your approved loading conditions booklet or damage stability

booklet.

Here is the list of the critical opening of one of the vessels.

Damage stability calculations

Damage stability calculations demonstrate if the vessel’s stowage would comply with

the damage stability requirements.

And as one of the requirements is that the critical opening must be above the

waterline, the damage stability calculations are supposed to give the distance from the

waterline to these openings.

Here are the damage stability calculations for one of the vessel.
The last column (Opening immersion) gives the distance from a critical opening (the

one with the least distance for that damaged case).

It also gives the identification of the opening for each case (in the above it is given as

the identification number of that opening).

So looking at the above calculations can you guess the worst case of damage stability?

Did you say “Damage case 301″ in which has the least distance of the critical opening

(no 40) from waterline (0.12m)?

Let us scroll to the next page of the damage stability calculations for this same loading

condition to see if you are right.

Bingo. You are absolutely right. It is damage case 301 indeed.
You see this loading computer identifies the “most severe damage case” and provides

the information in one section.

But if your loading computer does not do that then you can identify the most severe

damage case by looking at the distance of critical opening from the waterline.

But there is one more thing that you need to be careful about.

You need to check if the damage case with the least distance of critical opening from

the waterline is not assumed to be flooded.

If it is assumed to be flooded, then the distance of this opening from the waterline

would not matter and we need to look for the next most severe case.

For example, look at this damage stability calculations.

Which would be the most severe damage case in this?
You would probably say, damage case 408 with the least distance of 0.25m for

opening # 46.

The opening no 46 is Air vent for E/R cofferdam (S).

And the assumed damaged compartments in damage case 408 are: 5W(P), SP(P),

E/RFORDM, S/G RM, FWT(P).

The opening no 46 comes under one of these damaged compartments (E/RFORDM).

So we need to neglect this while choosing the most severe damage case.

In this case, we need to look for the next most severe damage case and so on till we

have a damage case where the distance is the least and the compartment of the critical

opening is not already assumed as flooded.

In the above example, this would be damage case 108 as the most severe damage case.
Conclusion
It is not a statutory requirement for the masters to know about the most severe damage

case.
However, SIRE requires masters to be aware of that.

Surely the factors that decide the compliance with the damage stability requirements

need to be the one that decides the most severe case of damage stability too.

And these factors are

GZ and other associated data

angle of heel
the distance of critical opening from the waterline
IMO has already defined the minimum required criteria for the first two factors but

not for the third one.

This is the factor that decides the most severe case of damage stability.

The damage case that has the least distance of the critical opening to the waterline will

be the most severe damage case.

The most severe damage case need not be the same for all loading conditions.

It can be different for different loading conditions but more often there will be one

damage case that would appear as the favorite for most of the loading conditions.

About Capt Rajeev Jassal

Capt. Rajeev Jassal has sailed for over 20 years mainly on crude oil, product and chemical tankers. He
holds MBA in shipping & Logistics degree from London. He has done extensive research on
quantitatively measuring Safety culture onboard and safety climate ashore which he believes is the
most important element for safer shipping.

16 Comments
 Reply

Chiranjiv Rana
Aug 27, 2019

It is always a pleasure to read your articles sir. Just want to clarify .. as it is mentioned that worst
case of DS will depend on the least distance from the waterline of any critical opening that is not
already assumed to be flooded ... Will it not matter that the critical opening is serving which
compartment ... For eg 5S wbt may be a much smaller tank as compared to 4S wbt ... Will it not
affect the result if the critical opening serves 5s or 4s ? Thank you for your efforts sir ...
Reply

Rajeev Jassal
Sep 3, 2019

It won't matter as far as it is a critical opening...

Reply

Ilyas
Aug 28, 2019

Thank u sir . Very well explained.

Reply

Rajeev Jassal
Sep 3, 2019

Thanks Ilyas...
Reply

Satyajit Dilip
Aug 28, 2019

Excellent Sir. Just what I was looking for. The confusion has been finally cleared as to which to
choose from the Criteria .. Least GZ , greatest angle of heel or dist of opening to the waterline. So it
is the dist of the opening nearest to the waterline which will decide the worst damage case. Thanks
again Sir..
Reply

Rajeev Jassal
Sep 3, 2019

Glad you found it useful Satyajit...

Reply

Yogesh Raval
Sep 1, 2019

Sir the chapter above has clarified many doubts and confusions however in the above case kindly
also advice how it will be known that the compartment is considered to be flooded.
Reply

Rajeev Jassal
Sep 3, 2019
Each damage case assumes some compartment to be flooded. Which compartments are assumed to
be flooded in each damage case is provided in damage stability booklet.
Reply

Yogesh Raval
Sep 3, 2019

Thank you sir.

Reply

Rajeev Jassal
Sep 13, 2019

Thanks Yogesh...
Reply

Harbinder Singh
Sep 11, 2019

THANK YOU VERY MUCH SIR, FOR THE EFFORTS. YOU CANNOT IMAGINE THE HEIGHT
OF SATISFACTION I GOT AFTER READING THIS ARTICLE(SELF EXPLANATORY).
Reply

Rajeev Jassal
Sep 13, 2019

Great to hear that Harbinder...

Reply

Harbinder Singh
Sep 11, 2019

SIR WHAT DO WE UNDERSTAND BY DECK IMMERSION COLUMN IN DIFFERENT CASES

THE +VE & -VE ? VALUES AND THE NUMBER NEXT TO IT.
Reply

Rajeev Jassal
Sep 13, 2019

-ve means that deck line is immersed. +ve means deck line is not immersed. The number gives the
distance of the deck line to the water line.
Reply

Tolga Atabey
Sep 12, 2019

First of all thanks a lot for this beneficial information, it refreshed my knowledge as chief officer on
chemical tankers.I can barely see the importance of deck immersion however as far as I am
concerned, the GZ value should be also considered as well as deck immersion value. During the
calculations, I always firstly consider the value of GZ. I mean I always choose the least GZ value
result as worst case if I am right ? Could you please confirm if it is true all the time ?
Reply

Rajeev Jassal
Sep 13, 2019

We do not need to consider the value of GZ as if GZ is less than the required value then vessel is
not complying with the damage stability and there is no need to know the worst case of damage
stability becuase we need to first correct the stowage to the one where damage stability is complied
with.
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