Collision and Grounding of Ships and Offshore Structures – Amdahl, Ehlers & Leira (Eds)

© 2013 Taylor & Francis Group, London, ISBN 978-1-138-00059-9

A study on positive separating bulbous bow

B. Li
Deepwater Engineering Research Center, Harbin Engineering University, Harbin, China

L.S. Zhang
Jiangsu Hantong Ship Heavy Industry Co., Ltd., Nantong, China

L.P. Sun
Deepwater Engineering Research Center, Harbin Engineering University, Harbin, China

ABSTRACT: The purpose of this paper is to introduce a novel method for ship design against collision
accidents and to introduce a positive separating bulbous bow designed based on this method and also to study
the effectiveness of this kind of bulbous bow compared with the conventional one. In this paper, the authors put
forward a way to separate the bulbous bow from the striking ship so as to protect the cargo hold structure of the
struck ship from being penetrated by partly using high tensile steel. The more real scenario supposing that the
struck ship is navigating at a certain speed was considered. Nonlinear Finite Element Method (FEM) was used to
study the effectiveness of the positive separating bulbous bow. Two bulbous bows with the same size and shape
and one typical double hull structure in cargo hold area of a container vessel in service were modeled. One of the
bow models is a prototype of the positive separating bulbous bow with part of the shell plate replaced by plate
made of high tensile steel, and the other model is a conventional one. Collapse mechanism, force-time curve of
the positive separating bulbous bow structure was investigated and compared with those of conventional bow
structure. It is found from these investigations that the positive separating bulbous bow structure is expected to
be efficient to reduce the risk of cargo leakage in case of ship collisions, and the method of using high tensile
steel in ship collision accidents protection is reasonable.

1 INTRODUCTION lead to a different structure behavior. Kitamura (2000)

Bulbous bow can help to reduce a ship’s resistance and
thus to save the fuel consumption up to 15%. And now
it is widely used in ship building industry. However,
bulbous bow is also regarded as a threat to a struck
ship in collision accidents because it may generally
penetrate the side shell of the struck vessel, which may
cause the leakage of hazardous goods. How to avoid
the disaster results of collision accidents through the
bulbous bow design have become a focus of structure
design against collision.
Many researchers have investigated the behavior of
bulbous bow structure in collision situation. Kitamura
(2000) estimated the ultimate strength and energy
absorption capability of both conventional and buffer
bulbous bow and proposed interim guidelines on
buffer bulbous bow design. Yamada & Endo (2004)
studied the crashing mechanisms of the buffer bulbous
bow with a transverse stiffening system.
The right angle collision scenario was widely
assumed in collision simulations but many investi-
gations of real collision accidents, e.g., Isle of Man
Ship Registry (2006), BSU (2012) and Floris et al.
(2011), reveal that the struck vessel usually has a for-
ward velocity in a ship to ship collision, which will
found out that bulbous bow wound bend slightly when
the struck vessel has a forward speed, though the
effects are not obvious because of the relative low
strength of the side shell compared to bulbous bow.
Yamada & Endo (2004) found out that bow would col-
lapse in overall horizontal bending model near the root
of the bulb in an oblique collision scenario through
simulation.
The purpose of collision protection is to ensure the
intact of cargo hold and sometimes the bulbous bow
can be sacrificed. Many novel bow types concern-
ing collision protection have also been put forward.
Cheung (1969) put forward the concept of buffer bow
design. Endo et al. (2004) proposed a bulbous bow
design by using low yield point steel to accelerate the
bow bending process in oblique collision scenarios.
Takaoka et al. (2004) studied the transverse stiffened
SEA-Arrow buffer bow and also its improvements –
the ‘SPS-SEA-Arrow’ structure with sandwich plates.
Tautz et al. (2010) considered removing the longitudi-
nal structural elements in foremost part of the bulbous
bow, which would increase the bow’s energy absorp-
tion ability. Kitamura (1994) invented an anti-collision
bulbous bow with some openings on the shell plate of
a conventional bulbous bow.

117
Figure 1. The rupture behavior of brittle material and ductile
material.
Figure 2. Engineering strain and stress for brittle steel
(HT690, HT460) and ductile steel (MS235).
Considering that the strength of the side shell struc-
ture is relatively low as compared to the bulbous bow,
the buffer bow may not collapse before the inner
hull structure being penetrated. And concepts that
change the construction of a bulbous bow such as
using non-watertight shell plate or remove the lon-
gitudinal structural elements may not applicable in
practical application. More effective method should
be proposed.
2 POSITIVE SEPARATING BULBOUS BOW
High tensile steel like HT690 has a very high yield
point and shows a reduced plastic ductility and brittle
fracture behavior compared to mild steel (Zhang et al.
2003). Figure 1. shows the different rupture behav-
ior for typical brittle material and ductile material.
Figure 2. shows the engineering strain and stress for
brittle steel (high tensile steel, e.g., HT690, HT460)
and ductile steel(mild steel, e.g., MS235).
As we can see from the above material curves, the
higher a material’s strength, the lower the fracture
strain. That is the source of the novel bow idea.
The idea of Positive Separating Bulbous Bow is to
use the brittle fracture behavior of high tensile steel to
realize the quickly separation of the bulbous bow in a
collision accident.
118
Figure 3. The illustration of the Positive Separating Bulbous
Bow.
Table 1. The principle dimension of vessel.
Length 230 m
Breadth 32 m
Depth 19 m
Scantling draught 12 m
Breadth of double hull 2.0 m
Length of bulbous bow 7.5 m
Displacement 57000 t
Figure 3 illustrate a configuration of this bulbous
bow from this concept.
A narrow strip of shell plate made of high tensile
steel (e.g., HT690) is used to replace the plate made
of mild steel (e.g., MS235) near the root of a bul-
bous bow. When such a long and sharp bulbous bow
collides with another vessel, the plate made of high ten-
sile steel would break quickly under the combination
of large compression force and shear force induced by
collision.The break behavior of HT690 has been inves-
tigated by Zhang et al. (2003). And with the motion
of the struck vessel, the bow tip can separate, which
would keep the bow tip from penetration into another
vessel’s cargo hold.
While at the same time, with a elastic limit of about
690 MPa, HT690 can expected to function well in
against normal environment loads.
It may prove to be a simple and cost-effective design
to prevent collision accidents.
3 COLLISION SIMULATIONS
Nonlinear Finite Element Method (FEM) was used to
study the effectiveness of the positive separating bul-
bous bow. Two finite element analyses were conducted
using nonlinear structural analysis code “LS-DYNA”.
3.1 Collision simulations
The collision scenario is assumed to be that the strik-
ing vessel with a bulbous bow collides perpendicularly
with a double hull container vessel in full loaded con-
dition. A 4000TEU container vessel (see Table 1) is
assumed to be both the striking vessel and the struck
vessel.
Table 2. The velocity of the vessels in this simulation.

Velocity (m/s)

Description Striking vessel Struck vessel

case 1 Bow with HT690 4.5 6.5

case 2 Bow with MS235 4.5 6.5

Figure 5. Overview of the collision model and boundary

conditions.

Figure 4. Overview of the collision model with beam

elements visible.

The forward speeds of both vessels are taken into

account in this simulation as it is assumed to be a more
real collision scenario (see Table 2).

3.2 Finite element analysis

The bulbous bow in simulation case 1 is a prototype
of the Positive Separating Bulbous Bow with a strip
of shell plate made of high tensile steel HT690. The
breadth of the strip is about 300 mm that is half of the
frame spacing. Model in case 2 is an conventional bul-
bous bow with the strip of steel plate made of mild
steel MS235, Material properties will be discussed
later. Apart from the differences in material type, plate
thickness and the failure strain, all the other parameters
and conditions are the same for these two cases. Figure 6. Overview of the bulbous bow structures.

mesh (about 295 mm) as shown in Figure 6. The trans-

3.3 Finite element models
The FE model consists of two major parts: a struck
vessel with the portside of cargo hold area modeled in
detail and a striking vessel with bulbous bow modeled
in detail. The dimension of the plates, stiffeners and
holes in this FE model are precisely modeled according
to a conversional container vessel using GL Poseidon
software (POSEIDON, 2003). Figure 4–5 show the
collision model used in this paper.
For the striking ship, the bow structures were con-
sidered as deformable and the arrangement of holes
and stiffeners inside the bow had been modeled in
detail. Bow structures before collision bulkhead were
modeled as shell and beam elements. The strip of shell
plate where high tensile steel would be used was mod-
eled with fine mesh (the element length was about
148 mm) and the other parts were modeled with coarse
lational movements (in x and z direction) and rotational
movements of all the nodes in the center plane_B
are constrained. Nodes in collision bulkhead frame
were coupled with beam element node by using key-
word: *constrained_nodal_rigid_body_ title (CNRB),
see Figure 4 and Figure 5. The configurations of the
bow structures are shown in Figure 6.
For the struck vessel, half of one cargo hold near
the mid-ship was modeled. The plates were modeled
with shell elements and stiffeners with beam ele-
ments. Only at the collision area, the mesh was refined
(about 395 mm). The translational movements (in y
and z direction) and rotational movements of all the
nodes in the center plane_A are constrained, see Fig-
ure 5. Nodes in transverse bulkhead frame were also
coupled with beam element node by using keyword:
*constrained_nodal _rigid_body_title.

119

Figure 7. Overview of the double hull structures.
The configurations of the double hull structures are
shown in Figure 7 below.
All the mass for the rest of the vessel were applied
using mass elements, see Figure 5. Beam elements
were used to connect the discrete mass elements for
striking vessel and struck vessel respectively see Fig-
ure 5, the cross-section area for beam element should
be large enough as to transfer the load and it was set
to be 3 m2 in this paper, See Figure 4–5.
The collision simulations lasted for 1.2 seconds for
both cases and the contact force between bulbous bow
and double hull structures were calculated by using
keyword:*contact_force_transducer_penalty. Struc-
ture deformations for both bulbous bow and double
hull were compared and investigated in detail.
3.4 Materials model
3.4.1 Materials properties
Material model are important for this collision simu-
lation as to investigate the effectiveness of high tensile
steel HT690. Therefore, the accurate material models
should be provided. The true stress-strain relationship
material models in the following form were used in
this paper (Zhang et al. 2004):
Where
Ag is the maximal uniform strain and Rm is the ultimate
tensile stress.
Three kinds of steels were used in this stimulation.
Materials and their properties were listed in Table 3.
The corresponding stress-strain curves for different
material models are calculated according to formular
(1)∼(3) can be seen in Figure 8.
120
Table 3. Material and material properties in this simulation.
Yield stress σs/MPa Rm /MPa Ag
MS235 ≥235 460 0.10
Q315 ≥315 505 0.09
HT690 ≥690 820 0.03
MS235: mild steel with yield stress 235 MPa
Q315: high tensile steel with yield stress 315 MPa
HT690: high tensile steel with yield stress 690 MPa
Figure 8. Material models for MS235, Q315 and HT690.
Figure 9. Overview of the test specimen.
3.4.2 Validation of the material model by analysis
In order to verify the correctness of the material mod-
els, the tensile tests according to GL rules (GL rules,
2009) have been carried out by using LS-DYNA. Fail-
ure of the element was not considered and the value
of failure strain was set to 20. The dimensions of the
specimen are showed in Figure 9.
The results of the tensile tests simulations show
that the uniform deformation before necking for high
tensile steel is larger than mild steel, see Figure 10.
The high tensile steel shows a reduced plastic ductility
and brittle fracture behavior as previously mentioned,
which may indicate that the material models used in
these collision simulations are proper and can reflect
the true behavior of different steels to some extent.
3.5 Determine the thickness for HT690
The plate where high tensile steel is used has smaller
plate thickness than the plate where mild steel is used
in order to maintain equivalent local strength.
The thickness can be determined roughly by the
ratio of the yield stress. The yield stress for HT690 is

Figure 10. Force versus elongation for steel MS235 Q315
and HT690.
about 690 MPa, and the yield stress value for MS235
is about 235 MPa. The original thickness of the plate
strip is 20 mm, made of mild steel. The thickness of
the high tensile steel plate then can be determined:
t = 235/690*20 = 6.8(mm) ≈ 7(mm)
And 7 mm was used in this simulation for case 1.
3.6 Failure criteria
During the stimulation, when the effective plastic
strain reaches the predefined failure stain, the element
will be deleted from the FE model. Considering the
mesh size effect, the following definition for failure
strain was used in this paper.
where Ag is the uniform strain and εe is the neck-
ing strain, t is the plate thickness and Lc is the
characteristic length for individual element.
The definition of the characteristic length Lc for a
shell element in LS-DYNA is:
where l1 , l2 , l3 , is the side length of a single shell
element, and A is the element area. β = 1, for trian-
gular shell elements and β = 0, for quadrilateral shell
elements.
Material parameters are listed in Table 4.
The failure strain εf which corresponds to differ-
ent element material type, thickness and characteristic
length are calculated according to formula (4) and
listed in Table 5 below.
121
Table 4. The values of uniform strain and the necking strain
for different materials (Dr. L. Zhang et al, 2003).
Element type Material Type Ag εe
Shell MS235 10% 50.39%
Q315 9% 48.50%
HT690 3% 37.10%
Beam, Truss MS235,Q315 7.90% 76%
Table 5. The failure strain for this FE model.
4 RESULTS OF THE SIMULATION
4.1 Time history of contact force
Histories of contact force component in x direction,
contact force component in y direction and resultant
contact force were showed and compared in Figure 11,
Figure 12 and Figure 13 respectively for both cases.
It was observed that before time 0.646s, the con-
tact forces in x direction, y direction are almost the
same for both cases. The first force-peak appeared at
about 0.18s and the second force-peak appeared at time
0.646s.
Significant differences occurred at 0.646s. In case
1 where high tensile steel was used, the contact force
component in x direction dropped sharply to about
0.25 MN, and after several fluctuations tended to be
zero. The contact force component in y direction
dropped to about 27 MN, and after several significant
fluctuations went slowly down to be 15 MN at the end
of simulation.
In case 2 where mild steel was used, the contact
force component in x direction dropped obviously
to be about 15 MN, and shortly after that fluctuated
up quickly to be about 35 MN at 1.2s. The contact
force component in y direction dropped significantly
to about 10 MN, and went up to 15 MN at about 1.2s.
The history of the resultant contact force kept
almost the same from beginning to about 0.646 s for
Figure 11. Comparison of the contact force component in
x direction (Horizontal shear force).
Figure 12. Comparison of the contact force component in
y direction (Normal component force).
Figure 13. Comparison of the resultant contact force.
both cases. Significant difference occurred from about
0.9 s, as can be seen from Figure 13.
4.2 Overall structure deformation
It was observed in the stimulation that before time
0.646s, the overall structure behaviors of the bow and
double hull were almost the same for both cases. The
outer shell plate ruptured shortly after the collision
took place at about 0.18s. The bow structure kept intact
with no significant damage before time 0.646s in both
cases, see Figure 14–17.
122
Figure 14. Deformation and effective stress distribution for
side shell in case 1 at time 0.646s.
Figure 15. Deformation and effective stress distribution for
bulbous bow in case 1 at time 0.646s.
Figure 16. Deformation and effective stress distribution for
side shell in case 2 at time 0.646s.
Differences occurred at 0.646s.
In case 1, the strip of shell plate at heavier compres-
sion side started to collapse as indicated in Figure 15.
Shortly after the collapse, the bulbous bow broke down
and the direction of bow tip deflected rapidly. No sig-
nificantly rupture of inner hull was observed during
the stimulation as showed in Figure 14 and Figure 18.
Finally the bow tip separated from the striking vessel
Figure 17. Deformation and effective stress distribution for
bulbous bow in case 2 at time 0.646s.
Figure 18. Deformation and effective stress distribution for
side shell in case 1 at time 1.2s.
Figure 19. Deformation and effective stress distribution for
side shell in case 2 at time 1.2s.
as indicated in Figure 20. The extent of damaged area
for case 1 is about 6.82 m at time 1.2s as indicated in
Figure 22.
In case 2 where mild steel is used, the inner hull
ruptured at about 0.646s as indicated in Figure 16. As
the bulbous bow was moving forward, the damage of
inner hull became even worse as showed in Figure 19.
At the termination time, the shape of bulbous bow
kept more or less intact but with some dent deforma-
tion locally in the contact area as indicated in Figure 19
and 21. The extent of damaged area for case 2 is about
8.35 m at time 1.2s as indicated in Figure 23.
123
Figure 20. Deformation and effective stress distribution for
bulbous bow in case 1 at time 1.2s.
Figure 21. Deformation and effective stress distribution for
bulbous bow in case 2 at time 1.2s.
Figure 22. Extent of damaged area in case 1 at time 1.2s.
Figure 24 shows the energy balance for simulation
case 1. The total energy in the Figure 24 is the sum
of kinetic energy, sliding energy, internal energy and
external energy. As can be found from the figure the
total energy is 1742 MJ equals to the total initial kinetic
energy of both vessels. Total dissipated energy at the
end of the simulation is about 231 MJ, which takes up
about 13.3% of the total energy.
Figure 25 and Figure 26 shows the history of for-
ward velocity for striking vessel and struck vessel
respectively. The initial velocity for struck vessel in
case 2 is 6.5 m/s. After 1.2s the velocity decreases to
5.97 m/s, which accounts for about 91.8% of the ini-
tial value. The initial velocity for striking vessel was
Figure 23. Extent of damaged area in case 2 at time 1.2s.
Figure 24. Energy dissipating distribution for case 1 during
stimulation.
Figure 25. Comparison of the velocity of the struck vessel.
4.5 m/s. After 1.2s the velocity decreases to 3.98 m/s,
which is about 88.4% of the initial value.
5 DISCUSSION
According to the force versus time curves, the histories
of reaction forces for case 1 and case 2 are more or less
the same before inner hull’s damage, which means that
the strip of high tensile steel can function pretty well
124
Figure 26. Comparison of the velocity of the striking vessel.
in normal environment loading conditions as the mild
steel.
Figure 12 shows two force-peaks of the contact
force component in y direction (Normal component
force). The reason why contact force dropped down
after the first force peak was the rupture and damage
of outer shell in both cases. The reason why the contact
force dropped down at the second force peak in case 2
was the rupture and damage of the inner hull structure,
which indicated that the bulbous bow had penetrated
into the cargo hold in case 2. But the reason why force
dropped down for case 1 was the damage of the plate
strip made of high tensile steel.
After the damage of the high tensile steel, the con-
tact force component in x direction and the resultant
force dropped down significantly see Figure 12–13.
Throughout the simulation in case 1, the inner hull
kept intact. See Figure 14,15 and 18. It suggested that
the high tensile steel had successfully protected the
inner hull from penetrated by the bulbous bow.
Figure 11 shows that after time 0.646s when the
inner hull was penetrated, the shear force in case 2
was larger than that in case 1. The explanation for that
phenomenon maybe explained like that after the bul-
bous bow penetrating into the cargo hold, it still kept
intact and would carry on tearing the double hull struc-
ture. As a result, the damage to the double hull from
the bulbous bow may be even worse than in case 1. It
also explained the reason why the extent of damage
area in case 2 larger then that in case 1 as showed in
Figure 22 and Figure 23.
The reason for the contact force component in Y
direction stayed at a relative high level in case 1 maybe
explained like that: though the strip of high tensile steel
was destroyed, the bow tip was still stuck between the
two vessels. As the striking vessel kept approaching
the struck vessel, the bow tip may also transfer high
contact force to the inner hull. But because of the for-
ward velocity of the struck vessel, the direction of the
bow tip would deflect. As a result, the contact area may
increase and the contact force imposed on inner hull
would decrease. Finally, the bow tip would separate
with the striking vessel along with the motion of the
struck vessel as showed in Figure 20.
The changes of velocity for striking vessel and for
struck vessel are showed in Figure 25 and Figure 26
respectively. After 1.2s of simulation, the decrease of
velocity is relative small, the largest of which accounts
for about 11.6 percent of the initial value. So a constant
velocity maybe acceptable for a collision simulation.
From the energy balance showed in Figure 24, the
total dissipated energies at the end of the simulation
is about 231 MJ, which takes up to 13.3% of the total
energy. So it maybe reasonable to say attempts may
not be so effective to design a bulbous bow to absorb
collision energy.
6 CONCLUSION
This paper introduced a novel concept for ship colli-
sion protection and introduced a device named positive
separating bulbous bow designed based on this con-
cept. The effectiveness of this kind of bulbous bow
compared to a conventional one had been studied by
using FEM. Collapse mechanism, force-time curve
were also investigated as compared to those of a con-
ventional bow. The FEM simulation shows that the
strip of high tensile steel can rupture and can be
destroyed before the inner hull being penetrated.
At the end of the simulation, inner hull of the
struck vessel kept intact, which suggested that the pos-
itive separation bulbous bow could protect the struck
vessel from being penetrated. The result also shows
that this kind of bulbous bow can withstand the nor-
mal environment loading quite well as conventional
bow do.
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