About the lecture:

This talk will emphasize that the understanding of at least these three topics is crucial to accurately predicting the occurrence of critical large amplitude ship rolling motions possibly leading to capsizing. Only a balanced approach incorporating all three can have any hope of achieving the goals of the IMO’s proposed Second Generation Ship Stability Criteria. Development of any analytic criteria for dynamic stability assessment involves two steps – first is formulating a model which effectively captures the physics of the problem with reasonable accuracy and the second is the application of analytical techniques to the chosen model.

While developing a model one needs to adequately understand the relative importance of hydrodynamic, and hydrostatics forces and moments; particularly, the roll damping which is at least as important as the hydrostatic restoring moment. Both nonlinearity and coupling of the roll motion to the other degrees of freedom are important. The nonlinearity due to the softening stiffness is particularly important when analyzing roll motion of ships.  

The second part of the talk will address the various analytical techniques which can be applied to analyze the probabilistic characteristics (both long term and short term) of roll response due to the random nature of the wind and wave excitation. Particular focus will be given to the quantification of the probability of escape from the bounded safe region. The calculated escape probability will indicate the reliability of the system. Finally, a physics based approach such as described herein will be equally applicable to either ship shaped or non-ship shaped floating offshore platforms.

Short Bio:

Dr. Jeffrey Falzarano is professor of Ocean Engineering at Texas A&M University. He received his BS degree in Naval Architecture from Webb Institute. He received his Master’s and PhD from the University of Michigan in Naval Architecture. He also obtained Master’s degrees in Applied Mechanics and Aerospace Engineering from the University of Michigan. At Texas A&M, he is the Director of the Marine Dynamics Laboratory and Director of Graduate Programs of the recently formed Ocean Engineering Department. He has over 25 years of experience as a tenure/tenure track naval architecture and ocean engineering faculty member. He has supervised and graduated over 40 graduate students and has published more than 100 publications in refereed journals and international conference proceedings describing this work. Based upon his significant original contributions to the study of nonlinear and stochastic dynamics of ships and marine structures in 2005, he was elected a fellow in both the Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers (SNAME) and American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME). Prior to his academic career, Dr. Falzarano worked as a naval architect for the US Coast Guard’s design branch where amongst other projects, he participated in the hydrodynamic design of a proposed SWATH patrol cutter and the concept design of an icebreaker. He has also interned at the US Coast Guard doing ship stability research and ABS R&D supporting the development of their Response Based MODU Stability Criteria. He has also worked as visiting professor at various research labs and international academic institutions.