Miniature marine structures to reproduce structural damage in ship collision scenarios: from similarity laws to additive manufactured models

Considerable advances have been made in the last decades to computationally model the structural response of marine structures subjected to collisions and grounding events. Within existing numerical tools, finite element method stands out as one of the most complete, reliable and robust technique. However, there are still some complex aspects difficult to model numerically such as the effect of ship cargo, surrounding water, harsh environment conditions, pre-damaged structures, explosion, etc. The aim of this work is to present the ongoing development of a novel tool to reproduce experimentally the structural collapse of marine structures in reduced scale. The main potential applicability of this novel technique is to replicate complex ship accident scenarios. This tool combines principles of structural similarity, experimental mechanics and miniature metallic marine structures made of rolled steel sheet and additive manufacture. The structural response of some crushing experiments in real-scale marine structures are reproduced in miniature to validate the technique.