Objectives Although the fluid-structure interaction calculation method can better simulate the ship collision process, it requires a longer calculation time. To address this problem, a simplified numerical calculation method is proposed.

Methods The local cabin section of a ship is taken as the object to carry out water collision experiments under various operating conditions. Force sensors and non-contact measurement based on high-speed photography technology are used to obtain the collision force and motion time history data of the ship. The collision contact force and acceleration response data are then analyzed, and arbitrary Lagrange−Euler (ALE) coupled fluid-solid numerical computational analysis is carried out on the experimental process. The effect of the water on the impacting ship in the collision process is then simplified to the equivalent mass, and the effect on the impacted ship is simplified to the equivalent resistance, which acts on the non-impacting side of the impacted ship in the form of surface force to hinder the movement of the impacted ship. Numerical calculations that do not involve the water-structure coupling process are then carried out on the basis of the simplified method.

Results The results show that the errors between the peak collision force and the experimental values for each condition obtained by the simplified calculation method are within 5%, and the calculation time required by this method is much smaller than that of the ALE fluid-structure interaction algorithm

Conclusions The proposed simplified numerical calculation method can provide useful references for realizing the efficient calculation of ship structure collision response.