SLAMMING ANALYSIS OVERHANGING SPUD BARGE

Project Summary

Early 2008, Great Lake Dredge & Dock Company relocated a large amount of dredging equipment from the Bahamas to the Middle

East, using the heavy-lift ship TAI AN KOU. Because the tight stowage plan called for a spud barge to be stowed athwardships, thus

overhanging almost 20 m on both sides, Argonautics Marine Engineering, Inc. became involved to assist in verifying the overall

feasibility, and to access the potential for slamming and uplift of the barge.

The time domain analysis was performed to study the behavior of the loaded vessel in various sea state conditions and wave

headings. Buoyancy and slamming loads were generated for the various cases. The proposed stowage was feasible, and slamming

was found to be limited to higher sea states and bow quartering wave heading only. The total dynamic loads on the spud barge were

less than the design loads for the seafastening arrangement.

Early March, after a carefully weather routed Atlantic crossing, the TAI AN KOU safely arrived in the Middle East and offloaded all

equipment.

The project scope included:

A short video showing the results of the MOSES time domain analysis for the most severe bow quartering case. Requires Windows

Media Player.

Photograph courtesy of MatthewsDaniel.

specialists in marine heavy-lift transportation engineering

naval architects

marine surveyors

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Est. 1992

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Modeling the ship and cargo;

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Generate buoyancy and slamming loads on the barge overhang, as function of wave height, wave period, and wave direction;

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Verify the adequacy of the seafastening design;

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Check strength of overhanging barge sections.

The loaded TAI AN KOU departing the Bahamas