Thesis (Ph. D.)--Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, 2004. / Vita. Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (p. 234-243).

published_or_final_version / Geography and Geology / Master / Master of Philosophy

Thesis (doctoral)--Georg-August-Universität zu Göttingen. / "Erläuterung der abkürzungen und literatur-verzeichnis": p. [vii]-xii.

Ship collision accidents are rare events but pose huge threat to human lives, assets, and the environment. Collision resistance of ships is usually assessed in terms of ship structural response such as member displacement, energy dissipation and the extent of damage. Many researchers have sought for effective models that compute ship stochastic response during collisions by considering the variability of collision scenario parameters. However, the models were limited by the capability of the collision computational models and did not completely capture collision scenario, and material and geometric uncertainties. In addition, the simplified models capturing the input-response relationships of the ship structural impact mechanics are in implicit forms which makes them unsuitable for assessing the performance of structural design specifications in collisions. Furthermore, with increasing ship passages in the Arctic region, the probabilities of ship-iceberg interactions are increasing, highlighting the need to focus on risk based ship designs. In this research, a conceptual stochastic modelling framework is developed for performance characterisation and quantitative risk assessment of ship-ship and ship-iceberg collisions. In this direction, an interface for automated stochastic finite element computations was developed to model ship structural resistance in reference collision scenarios. The stochastic structural response was characterised based on the onset of the ship structural failure. The focus was initially on ship-ship collisions to quantify the uncertainties experimentally and to characterise the performance for a variety of striking ships. The framework was then extended to consider probabilistic performance measures in ship-iceberg collisions. The computationally intensive collision response models were captured with efficient surrogate representations so that the performance measures can be obtained with gradient based reliability approaches. The most probable input design sets for the response distribution were sampled with Latin Hypercube models. The probabilistic performance measures were also combined with available collision frequency models from literature for risk computations and to demonstrate the risk tolerance measures. The framework underlines the significance of different risk components, providing valuable guidance for improving risk-based ship designs. Although, a double-hull crude oil carrier is presented as the struck ship, the approach can be readily extended to characterise the performance and risk of other ship structures in collisions.

No description available.

In this day and age of europeanisation and internationalisation of all aspects of society, including law, the topic of medieval maritime law has attracted increasing interest.  Regulating sea shipping, which is characterised by the connection between different ‘nations’, sea law is intrinsically international.  Or is it?  The existence of a common medieval maritime law has often been presumed, but is researched thoroughly for the first time in this study. By analysing the developing and spread of the written sea laws across Northern Europe and by comparing the contents of the different maritime regulations, as well as the legal practice in five Northern European towns (Lübeck in Northern Germany, Reval (Tallinn) in Estonia, Danzig (Gdansk) in Poland, Kampen in the Netherlands and Aberdeen in Scotland) by using the examples of shipwreck, jettison and ship collision, the author has aimed to determine whether it is accurate to speak of a common law of the sea in medieval Northern Europe on the level of the books of law, their contents and the practice of the law at the town courts. Research has proven that there was no uniformity on any of these levels, despite occasional similarities between the laws and the judgements passed by the courts.  There was no single law compilation available throughout Northern Europe at any time during the Middle Ages, there were no common regulations in the written laws and there was  no uniform legal practice in the towns of Northern Europe. The divergence between the five towns handled in this study could largely be explained by the different role each of the towns played on the European stage.

Includes bibliographical references (p. 338-360).

Thesis (M.S.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Ocean Engineering; and, (M.S.)--Joint Program in Marine Environmental Systems, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, 1998. / Includes bibliographic references (p. 79). / by Charles E. Rawson. / M.S.

Thesis (Nav.E.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Ocean Engineering; and, (M.Eng.)--Joint Program in Marine Environmental Systems, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, 1998. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 85-86). / by Kurtis Wayne Crake. / Nav.E.

Thesis (M.A.)--Florida State University, 2003. / Advisor: Dr. Glen H. Doran, Florida State University, College of Arts and Sciences, Dept. of American and Florida Studies. Title and description from dissertation home page (viewed Mar. 2, 2004). Includes bibliographical references.