An experimental study on soft grounding of a model ship in water tank

Ship grounding often results in catastrophic consequences. It can be generally categorized into soft grounding and hard grounding. Currently, most of research within the field has predominantly concentrated on the
hard grounding of ship hulls, with little work on the ship's response to soft grounding in shallow waters. Generally the soft grounding process can be decoupled into external dynamics and internal mechanics. This
paper focuses on the experimental work on the external dynamics of a vessel in soft grounding considering the effects of soft slopes and surrounding water. To delve into the behavior of a ship during soft grounding, a model-scale soft grounding experiment was carried out on a sandy slope. The experiment measured the displacement and acceleration of three degrees of freedom of surge, heave and pitch. The grounding force between the ship and the slope is obtained by solving the motion equations. This study provides a comprehensive account of the experiment and results. Future work on soft grounding is recommended to improve the survivability of ships in such incidents.