Towards Safer Container Shipping

Casualty statistics show that container loss in heavy weather is an important issue for innovative container ship designs. The paper describes research activities at Germanischer Lloyd aiming at the reduction of cargo losses. One example is ship-specific operational guidance, assisting the ship master to avoid excessive motions and accelerations in heavy weather. Another example is the definition of design accelerations, underlying the operational guidance. The study includes the effects of container flexibility, not addressed explicitly in the present classification rules.