The physics of oil outflow from crude oil tankers during ship-ship collisions

• Main Author: Wang, Ya Xing
• Other Authors: Dimitrios Konovessis
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2015
• Subjects: DRNTU::Engineering::Mechanical engineering
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/63982
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

The detrimental consequences of large scale oil spills have drawn much attention to the physics of oil outflow and factors to control them. Researches on this topic mainly adopted the probability approach and those with experimental approaches lack the focus on the oil tanker as whole. Hence, this project was designed to analyse the physics of oil outflow in the events of ship-ship collisions and the factors affecting the amount of oil outflow using an experimental approach through simulations on four complete oil tanker models of different sizes. Theory on hydrostatic balance were studied and simulations were exercised to evaluate the effects of location of damage, ballast condition and size of ship on the amount of oil outflow from damaged tanks. Data obtained were analysed with reference to the theory on hydrostatic balance and has proven the applicability of the theory. Major implications and findings include the significant impact of vertical location of damage and ballast condition after collision and other potential factors of considerations possible for future studies, bringing the project a useful and contributing piece of work among relevant researches.