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Gelcoats are required to improve the durability of boat hulls, protect the laminate from environmental assault and provide a smooth aesthetic surface finish thus giving significant added value. The material employed for this application needs to exhibit high specific stiffness, strength and toughness, excellent surface quality and cost effectiveness. Unfortunately, conventional gelcoat systems are far from being satisfactory and improvements are needed to meet the diverse requirements of marine product customers.

The motions of a ship in the semi-displacement region are investigated. The focus is on the vertical dynamic forces which should not be neglected at this speed range. Two approaches are used to identify these dynamic forces. The first is an synthetic approach that uses a database of dynamic forces acting on the ship depending on the running attitude and speed of the ship. This database can be obtained from either CFD calculations or experiments.

This thesis presents the development and validation of a progressive collapse methodology for composite structures based on advanced nonlinear finite element analysis (FEA). The method is applied to parametric studies in order to investigate the influence of boundary conditions, material configurations and geometric imperfections on the response of individual structural members that form a composite ship hull. Effects on the analysis from the type and size of finite elements adopted in the FE discretisation scheme are also considered by conducting mesh refinement studies. In terms of material nonlinear behaviour, failure and progressive collapse of the composite section is performed at ply level. Alternative failure theories are compared for accuracy over a wide range of material, geometric and loading configurations. Good correlation between numerical and experimental results is identified from failure theories that accommodate interaction between failure modes and adopting an instantaneous degradation approach for the damaged properties. Failure of the bond region between plate and stiffener is also being considered in the analysis by adapting cohesive zones which also performs well against a variety of physical tests. Parametric studies are performed on square and long plates in compression for a wide range of slenderness ratios. Effects from the shape, size and location of geometric imperfections are also considered. As a result, a set of data is produced that can be used as an initial basis for design curves. This includes failure initiation and ultimate strength for the range of layup configurations under consideration. These studies are repeated for alternative boundary conditions in order to demonstrate their effect on the panel response. An application example for the ultimate longitudinal strength of a GRP hull girder is provided at the end from the progressive collapse analysis at a global level. This is compared against solutions from simplified methodologies that are based on simple beam theory and demonstrates the necessity for considering interaction effects between local and global panel deformations in the strength assessment of the hull girder.

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The aim of the research presented in this thesis was to investigate the cell biology behind the settlement and adhesion processes of biofouling algae. Using the fluorescent dye FM 1-43 in Ulva zoospores to follow membrane recycling, rapid mass membrane retrieval of FM 1-43-labelled plasma membrane was found to occur to an endosomal compartment during settlement. Biolistic delivery of dextran Oregon Green BAPTA-1 and Texas Red enabled ratiometric imaging with a 5-fold greater response to Ca\(^{2+}\)-ionophores than AM-ester Ca\(^{2+}\) indicators. During settlement, zoospores exhibited both localised and diffuse increases in cytosolic calcium implying a role in secretion of the adhesive. Secretion of redox-active substrates was detected using amperometry when settled spores were mechano-stimulated. Secretory events were similar to those seen in bovine chromaffin cells with the presence of foot signals in the recordings implying a role for a ‘fusion pore’ in exocytosis. Using DAF-FM DA nitric oxide (NO) production in Seminavis robusta was found to be 4-fold greater on a surface to which the cells adhered weakly than on a surface to which they attached more strongly. Increased NO reduced attachment strength and it is thought that NO may play a signalling and/or regulatory role in diatom adhesion.

A literature overview of past optimisation studies revealed that whilst satisfaction of intact stability requirements has been built into existing alternative hull form optimisation packages, seeking improved hydrodynamic hull forms in terms of seakeeping, calm water resistance and added resistance, damage stability is not an automated feature. Within the context of the hydrodynamic hull form optimisation techniques their application to novel hull forms would only permit use of deterministic damage stability analysis and as this is not straight-forward damage is applied after the hull is optimised. The damage must be relevant to ship type and applied in appropriate locations with sensible extents of damage. To fulfil this need both the Marine Accident Investigation Branch (MAIB) damage data base and a damage data base generated by Lutzen (2002) are interrogated and findings are reported. The hydrodynamic analysis of the optimised hull and basis hull for the intact and damage cases is thereafter carried out using a three-dimensional singularity distribution method. The relative vertical motion responses of both intact and damaged hull forms are determined with greater structural cross-coupling than is usually applied in the solution of the equations of ship motions. This has necessitated the development of a novel approach to implement the calculation of the pure and product moment of inertias for the intact and damaged hull forms to facilitate meaningful comparison of intact and damaged ship motions. The processes are equally applicable to any kind of ship.

Marine biofouling is the accumulation of organisms on underwater surfaces, causing increased ship hydrodynamic drag, which results in higher fuel consumption and decreased speed and range. Biofilms constitute a major component of the overall biofouling and may lead to a 14 % increase in ship fuel costs. Past solutions to antifouling (AF) have used toxic coatings which have subsequently been shown to severely affect marine life. The prohibited use of these antifoulants has led to the search for bio-inspired AF strategies. Current approaches towards the production of alternative coatings include the incorporation of natural AF compounds into paints. Screening assays for novel AF compounds are often separated into two categories; toxicity and AF assays. Increasingly there is evidence that active compounds affect organisms at non-toxic concentrations, hence, the necessity for more insightful AF testing, such as bacterial and diatom attachment. This study assessed natural product (NP) antifouling performance of two marine seaweeds (Chondrus crispus and Bifurcaria bifurcata) and two isolated pure compounds from terrestrial sources (usnic acid and juglone) against two marine biofilm bacteria, Cobetia marina and Marinobacter hydrocarbonoclasticus. Overall it was found that all NPs affected bacterial attachment, however, juglone demonstrated the best AF performance against both bacterial species at a concentration range between 5 - 20 ppm. Biofilm colonisation is a surface related phenomenon, thus novel bioassays have been developed to directly test biofilm attachment and growth on NP-containing coatings for both static and hydrodynamic conditions. This study has incorporated NPs into a model coating system, using two formulations in order to assess their effect on biofilm growth. Laboratory screening of NP-containing coatings is often largely unexplored mainly due to difficulties in assessing their activity over short experimental time scales (typically only a maximum of a few days). To date there are only a limited number of reports on laboratory assessment for antifouling paints and their effect on biofilm growth and/or attachment. In this study, NP-containing model paints were applied on to coupons, placed in 24-well plates and then inoculated with the marine biofilm forming bacteria. This has been achieved by the development of a novel bioassay protocol that has allowed the in situ observation of biofilm formation and growth, by corroborating different techniques such as a multidetection microplate reader and confocal laser scanning microscopy (through nucleic acid staining). There was good correlation between the two techniques which showed that the NP containing coatings significantly inhibited biofilm growth and also revealed marked differences in biofilm structure (e.g. bio-volume, morphology and thickness). The goal of this study was to develop a new protocol to allow assessment of biofilm formation on coatings in a high throughput non-invasive manner. New protocols and methods using microfluidic devices were developed for the assessment of bacterial attachments and initial biofilm formation in the presence and absence of a NP under hydrodynamic conditions. This led to the development and fabrication of a novel lab-on-a-chip device for the investigation of the biofilm response to different hydrodynamic conditions. The microfluidic flow channels were designed using computational fluid dynamic simulations so as to have a pre-defined, homogeneous wall shear stress in the channels, ranging from 0.03 to 4.30 Pa, which are relevant to in-service conditions on a ship hull.

This research has evaluated the rules, guidelines and regulations related to ship vibrations. A historical failure data analysis is carried out to identify associated components, equipment and the areas of defects related to ship vibration problems. Ship Hull Vibration (SHV) is recognised as a major problem onboard ships and the propulsion system is identified as the major contributor to SHV. The current status of ship vibrations is reviewed and possible sources which create SHV are recognised. The major problems identified in this research are associated with risk modelling under circumstances where high levels of uncertainty exist. Following the identification of research needs, this PhD thesis has developed several analytical models for the application of Formal Safety Assessment (FSA). Such mode quently demonstrated by their corresponding case sti vith regard to application of FSA for SHV modelling. Firstly, in this research a generic SHV model is constructed for the purpose of risk estimation based on the identified hazards. The hazards include the SHV effects induced by ship design criteria, failure of components, and different patterns associated with the ship propulsion system (propeller system and machinery) as the major contributors to SHV. Then risk estimation bn is carried out utilising Evidential Reasoning (ER) and a fuzzy rule base. Secondly, ship selection (decision making) is investigated to to select the best ship design based on the risk estimation results of SHV. The risk estimation is carried out using ER, a fuzzy rule base and continuous fuzzy sets. The best ship design is selected by taking into account an ER-based utility ranking approach. Thirdly, combining discrete fuzzy sets and an Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) risk estimation is conducted in terms of four risk parameters to select the major causes of component failure and then SHV.