The present study concentrates on the weak-scatterer hypothesis for the nonlinear wave-body interaction problems. In this method, the free surface boundary conditions are linearized on the incoming wave profile and the exact body motion is applied. The considered problems are the diffraction problem near a circular cylinder and the ship response in oblique waves. The numerical method of solution is a Rankine panel method. The Rankine panel method of this study adopts the higher-order B spline basis function for the approximation of physical variables. A modified Euler scheme is applied for the time stepping, which has neutral stability. The computational result shows some nonlinear behaviors of disturbance waves and wave forces. Moreover, the ship response shows very close results to experimental data.

A low-order potential based boundary element method is applied to the prediction of the flow around the cavitating propeller in steady or in unsteady inflow. For given cavitation number, the cavity shape is determined in an iterative manner until the kinematic and the dynamic boundary conditions are both satisfied on the approximate cavity boundary. In order to improve the solution behavior near the tip region, a hyperboloidal panel geometry and a modified split panel method are applied. The method is then extended to include the analysis of time-varying cavitating flows around the propeller blades via a time-step algorithm in time domain. In the method, the steady state oscillatory solution is obtained by incremental stepping in the itme domain. Finally, the present method is validated through comparison with other numerical results and experimental data.

The purpose of this paper is to study the upstream waves in front of an advancing arbitrary hull shape in a restricted water channel. Conventionally, in a restricted water channel, shallow water effects are amplified because of the finite water depth and width. When the effects of shallow water and the restricted channel width are severe, upstream waves propagate forward from the fore-body of the advancing hull. In this study, numerical simulations are carried out for the relevant analysis of the flow phenomena by the draft variation of advancing hull in a restricted water channel. Numerical simulations are done with a finite-difference method based on the MAC scheme in a rectangular grid system.

This paper deals with reliability analysis of specially orthotropic plates subjected to transverse lateral pressure loads by using Monte Carlo simulation method. The plates are simply supported around their all edges and have a low short span to plate depth ratio with rectangular plate shapes. Various levels of reliability analyses of the plates are performed within the context of First-Ply-Failure(FPF) analysis such as ply-/laminate-level reliability analyse, failure tree analysis and sensitivity analysis of basic design variables to estimated plate reliabilities. In performing all these levels of reliability analyses, the followings are considered within the Monte Carlo simulation method: (1) input parameters to the strengths of the plates such as applied transverse lateral pressure loads, elastic moduli, geometric including plate thickness and ultimate strength values of the plates are treated as basic design variables following a normal probability distribution; (2) the mechanical responses of the plates are calculated by using simplified higher-order shear deformation theory which can predict the mechanical responses of thick laminated plates accurately; and (3) the limit state equations are derived from polynomial failure criteria for composite materials such as maximum stress, maximum strain, Tsai-Hill, Tsai-Wu and Hoffman.