Investigating the Transient Flooding and Sloshing in Internal Compartments of an ITTC Damaged Ro-Ro Passenger Ferry: Part I—Experimental Setup

Passenger Ro-Ro ferries have proved to be extremely vulnerable regarding their hydrostatic stability when damaged. This is not only due to the design of their car decks. After an abrupt ingress of water caused by a maritime accident, the spaces below the car deck can experience intermediate flooding stages that might be more severe than the final condition, and the ship could actually sink in these early stages. The intermediate flooding stages depend upon hosts of factors pertaining to the vessel itself, the accident that caused the damage, as well as the environment. These factors are interdependent, and some of them interact during the flooding. An experimental campaign using the midsection of the PRR02 - ITTC/SiW passenger Ro-Ro ferry was devoted to provide a thorough insight to the flooding physics by quantifying these interactions using a novel-to-ocean-engineering methodology, the so-called DOE method, and try to find and then optimize a model for the transient flooding phase of Passenger Ro-Ro ferries. The present paper presents the physical background of the problem, as well as the innovative experimental set up that have been conceived to attain the objectives and hopefully lead to sound conclusions.