Test Facilities for Safety Studies of Ships and Offshore Structures Associated With Extreme and Accidental Conditions

Ships and offshore structures can face extreme and accidental events that can result in catastrophic consequences in association with casualties, property damages and pollution. Because the mechanism and its responses of structures in extreme and accidental events are highly nonlinear, it is essential to take advantage of experimental approaches as well as computational approaches in terms of identifying such nonlinear responses. Relevant test facilities are then required to meet the needs where full scale or at least large scale models should be dealt with. The objective of this article is to introduce test facilities recently built in the Korea Ship and Offshore Research Institute (KOSORI) at Pusan National University in Korea in terms of specifications and capabilities of various test facilities. Those facilities include test infrastructures in association with ultra-high subsea pressure, fires, explosions, structural failure and dropped object as well as high speed material test.