Simulation of Life Raft Motions on Irregular Wave - An Analysis of Situations Leading to Raft Capsizing

Successful rescue action at sea is based on a. o. a correct choice of rescue means and their reliability. Operational characteristics of life-saving appliances determine their performance in a given water area. Therefore they affect duration time of rescue action and decide this way on survival time of shipwrecked persons. This paper presents impact of characteristics of circular inflatable life rafts on their dynamics in a given sea environment. Particular issues dealing with raft motion were analyzed and their solutions were then presented in the form of computer programs built into MATLAB environment. The programs operate on the open choice basis–the user is requested to introduce data of a raft to be investigated. The program clearly informs which units should be used for the data. The obtained results allow to limit survivours searching area and simultaneously form the basis for working out a model of searched object drift motion. In this work the use was made of the results obtained from the KBN research project No. 4T12C03827 in which an attempt was made to analyzing capsize probability of a raft at given sea states. The raft investigated in the project is also used as a reference raft in the computer programs developed in this work.