A Safety Evaluation of Moored Ship Motions by Observed Tsunami Profile

Recent warnings indicate that there is a potential risk of massive earthquake in Japan within 30 years. These earthquakes could produce large-scale tsunamis. Tsunamis are very powerful and can be traveled thousands of miles and caused damage in many countries. Consideration of the effect of tsunami to the moored ship is very important because it brings the loss of life and vast property damage. In this paper, the numerical simulation procedure to analyze the motions of a moored ship due to the observed waves of tsunami, Tokachi-off earthquake tsunami profile in northern Pacific coasts of Japan on September 26 in 2003. And the effects on the motions and mooring loads are investigated by numerical simulation. Numerical simulations consist of hydrodynamic analyses in a frequency domain and ship motion analyses in a time domain as the motions of moored ships are examined. As the process begins, the hydrodynamic and wave- exciting forces for moored ships must be calculated. Ship motions and mooring forces can then be calculated by solving the equations of motion. In order to investigate the safety evaluation on the motions of moored ship by tsunami attack, we applied a numerical simulation procedure to a 135,000m3 LNG carrier moored at an offshore sea berth.