PAVING THE WAVES

Artur Karczewski

One of the most important aspects of the design of floating facilities such as ships, floating offshore structures or floating houses is stability. Its impact on both general safety and operational aspects renders it a fundamental consideration already in preliminary design stages. Usually, the concept of sufficient stability of floating buildings is associated with the ability to keep a small heel angle and residual freeboard, despite the action of the tilting moment. Once in the water, the floating object has to sustain different environmental conditions. It is always acted upon by forces from various factors. The identification of these factors is extremely important both in the assessment of stability and in the assessment of their effects on the safety of the users. The main sources of load are wind, waves and the shift of inhabitants. However, the challenges in the assessment of stability are connected to how the floating structure responds to these sources of load and also to the method of performing a stability analysis. This paper revisits several challenges encountered in the stability calculations and in the prediction of the behavior of floating buildings. A review of the current regulations in this aspect was also performed. The results enable the formation of general rules for the assessment of safety for floating buildings.

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KEYWORDS: stability, building, floating object

Artur Karczewski is a M.Sc. Assistant at the Department of Ship Design and Subsea Robotics at The Faculty of Ocean Engineering and Ship Technology, Gdańsk University of Technology.