VESSEL HULL

This study analyses wave induced structural loads on marine vessel hulls with emphasis on vessels operating in the Gulf of Guinea. Marine vessels experience highly variable sea states, and traditional analytical methods often struggle to capture nonlinear effects such as slamming, springing, and whipping. These limitations create uncertainties in predicting hull stress and deformation, especially for modern lightweight and fuelefficient ship designs. Existing literature highlights the need for regionspecific modeling due to limited hydrodynamic data available for West African waters. This research addresses this gap by applying advanced numerical simulation techniques Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) and the Finite Element Method (FEM) to model wave structure interaction under realistic wave conditions. The study uses seawater properties, mildsteel hull material characteristics, and wave parameters representative of the Gulf of Guinea. The CFD model generates pressure distributions on the hull surface for selected wave heights, while the FEM model evaluates the resulting stresses and deformations. The simulation procedure followed mesh generation, boundary condition specification, wave creation, pressure extraction, and structural analysis.