Crashworthiness of Type C Tanks in LPG Ship

Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) ships carry a liquefied gas either pressurized, refrigerated or both at the same time. Due to that, among the other cargo containment solutions on LPG ships, type C tanks may be distinguished: they are independent tanks built as conventional pressure vessels. A single hull design of such ships is common and a question of their crashworthiness arises. In particular, the safety of the cargo may be of concern in the case of high energy collision event. In a previous study, crashworthiness of both common and novel sandwich hull design of an LPG ship was studied. In both cases, cargo tank was damaged. It is the aim of this work to study this damage in detail. An LPG ship and ferry collision event was modeled and studied by the means of nonlinear FEM. Collision parameters were altered to study their influence on the resulting collision damage on both ships. Bi-lobe cargo tank crashworthiness is analyzed and the possibility of cargo spill examined.