An attempt to define critical wave and wind scenarios leading to capsize in beam sea

The IMO Weather Criterion has proven to be the governing stability criteria regarding minimum GM for e.g. small ferries and large passenger ships. The formulation of the Weather Criterion is based on some empirical relations derived many years ago for vessels not necessary representative for current new buildings with large superstructures.

Thus it seems rea-sonable to investigate the possibility of capsizing in beam sea under the joint action of waves and wind using direct time domain simulations. This has already been done in several studies. Here it is combined with the First Order Reliability Method to define possible combined critical wave and wind scenarios leading to capsize and corresponding probability of capsize.

The results for a fictitious vessel are compared with Monte Carlo simulation and good agreement is found at a much lesser computational effort. Finally, the results for a large container vessel and a small ferry will be discussed in the light of the current weather criterion.