A comparative study of failure criteria in ship collision simulations

In this paper, the simulation of indentation tests on a set of scaled models is carried out with the finite element method. Three different criteria, the equivalent plastic strain criterion, principal strain-through thickness strain criterion, and RTCL (Rice-Tracey & Cockcroft-Latham) criterion, are employed to simulate the onset of fractures on ship side structures. Then, the penetration depth, absorbed energy, and the location of initial failure simulated under different criteria are compared with the experimental results. It is shown that the RTCL criterion, which takes the stress state into consideration by introducing the stress triaxiality, demonstrates better performance in terms of predicting the location of fracture. In brief, this paper provides references for finite element analysis of the structural response during ship collision and grounding.