A semi-submersible drilling rig is regarded as one of the typical offshore structures operated in the field with moderate environments such as the Gulf of Mexico, Brazil, and West Africa. Its typical roll and pitch natural periods are around 30 seconds, which avoids prevailing regions of the wave energy spectrum, and their responses in waves are quite acceptable for common operation conditions. But large roll and pitch motions can be induced by wave difference frequency energy spectrum if the metacentric heights of a semi-submersible decrease to small values in some loading conditions, and it is because the roll and pitch natural periods increase and approach to the region where the spectral density of the low frequency wave drift moment has significant value. This paper describes the low frequency roll motion of a semi-submersible that are excited by the wave 2nd order difference frequency energy by a series of model experiments. From the model tests with several different initial metacentric heights (GM), it was observed that a semi-submersible can experience large roll motion due to the wave group spectrum.

Welding processes cause undesirable problems, such as residual stresses and deformations due to the thermal loads imposed by local heating, melting, and cooling processes. This paper presents a computational modeling technique to simulate the Gas Metal Arc Welding (GMAW) process, emphasizing the effect of the melting bead on the residual stress distribution. Both a three-bar analogy and a three-dimensional thermo-mechanical finite element analysis are carried out in order to explain the effect. Element (de)activation, enthalpy, and adjustment of the reference temperature of thermal strain are considered with respect to the effect of the weld filler metal added to the base metal during a thermo-elastic-plastic analysis. Stress distributions obtained by the present study are compared with measured values and available data from other studies. The effect of the melting bead on the residual stress distribution is discussed and demonstrated.

It is a very challenging work to design large Arctic LNG carrier, since LNG carrier requires high reliability for the structural safety and the environment of Arctic region is known to be very severe. Therefore, special attention should be paid for the verifying the structural safety of LNG career particularly with regard to LNG leakage. In this paper, the safety of the hull structure and cargo containment system of 208K MK $III^{TM}$ type LNG carriers with Arc4 is investigated based on the direct calculation of ice loads as well as wave loads. From the whole investigation, it is clear that the developed vessel - 208K MK $III^{TM}$ type LNG carrier with RMRS Ice class Arc4 - has enough strength and is safe to be operated in Arctic region.

This study aims the observation of wing-in-ground effect near free surface. Numerical computations are carried out to observe the deformation of free surface and the effects on lift and drag. The detailed flow fields around two- and three-dimensional wings with NACA 0012 section are observed from the results of a commercial CFD program, FLUENT, and the local deformations of free surface are obtained by applying a Rankine panel method. In the present cases, the small deformation of free surface under the wings is observed, but different forces are found between solid wall and free surface when the speed of wings becomes large.