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#13: Probabilistic Damage Wizard

For evaluating ship stability in damaged conditions, international regulations are focusing on the method adopted in 2005 by the International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS), known as Resolution MSC.194(80). The passenger-ship version escalates the complexity of the required calculations to a new level since it adds a requirement to evaluate stability with heeling moments due to wind, passenger crowding and lifeboat deployment and, in addition, requires checking intermediate flooding to determine whether lesser stability might be encountered as flooding progresses.

A new software application which runs within GHS automates almost all aspects of the task, so that setting up a run using the MSC.194(80) method can be done is just a few minutes. Yet it provides the naval architect with means of refining the procedure to take advantage of special features of the ship design. In keeping with this philosophy, it automatically produces a compact report presenting all of the essential information on which the computations are based; yet it provides options for producing detailed notes describing every step of the process.

Known simply as DAMSTAB2, it is written entirely in GHS command language. Its job is to automatically prepare the input files for performing damage stability calculations and then to run the calculations. It accomplishes this by launching a separate session of GHS which runs off the inputs it has prepared. It can launch and keep track of more than one session at a time -- one performing the calculations for starboard-side damage and the other for port-side damage, for example. More information

Current GHS users can download DAMSTAB2 from Creative Systems, Inc. free of charge at http://www.ghsport.com/support/DAMSTAB2.ZIP