A comprehensive description of the FloodW Simulation Code and its applications

The numerical model that goes under the name of FloodW represents a fast tool for simulating and analyzing the effects of flooding water on ship dynamics and loads in time domain, for safety purposes. This code was recently involved in the international benchmark study on simulation of flooding and motions of damaged Ropax vessels that was conducted within the EU Horizon 2020 project FLARE. The development of the code started for still water applications, limited to ship motions, while recently it was extended to flooding simulation in regular and irregular waves with the possibility to study also hull girder loads, but limited to regular waves. The core feature of the flooding water modeling is in the assumption of a free surface normal to the apparent gravity vector, which is evaluated accounting for ship and water dynamics. This approach, from validations with experimental data, was found fairly accurate in the whole range of filling levels of the damaged compartment, with finer accuracy for intermediate fillings. An alternative method was recently proposed and implemented, pertinent to low filling levels. Actually, a comprehensive description of the FloodW code together with its applications is missing especially regarding irregular wave scenario. Therefore, this paper aims at providing a compendium of the current capabilities of the code with its possible applications