Abstract
When blocks are supported on a dock, huge reaction forces concentrated at the supports cause structural damage owing to local stress concentrations. Thus, the supports should be arranged to avoid local failure from the reaction forces by redistributing those forces. Docking analyses to determine the proper blocks and their support arrangements are introduced so that the local stresses are minimized to warrant the safety of the docking supports. Local stresses enforced by the support arrangement should be evaluated by finite element analysis (FEA). However, it is difficult to consider an accurate 3D geometry of the blocks in the finite element model because the structural design information is too complicated to determine within several days using the FEA model. This paper presents a simplified FE model to evaluate the safety of the arrangement of supports using a simplified grillage element. The grillage element can be efficiently used to obrain the reaction forces in docking analysis becasuse the reaction forces at the supports are enough to assess the safety of block. Since a simplified grillage model of the entire ship cannot accurately calculate the local stresses, an optimized modeling method based on the grillage element was introduced. The local reaction forces obtained by the proposed approach and three-dimensional FEA were discussed for typical types of ships. It is shown that the reaction forces obtained by the present grillage model are in reasonably good agreement with the FEA model.