dc.description.abstract | Due to climate change, extreme navigation conditions are being increasingly encountered on inland
waterways worldwide. In Europe, a sustained low-water periods have been recorded in recent years. As a
consequence, the current European inland fleet is expected to experience extended periods of suspended
navigation, which could disrupt the logistic chains and may result in decrease of GDP of countries relying
on inland navigation, as reported. Even though it may be argued that inland vessel design is already
optimized with respect to specific fairway constraints (bridge heights, lock dimensions, fairway depth,
etc.), the recent low water level issues naturally govern the ship design toward the shallow-draught
concepts. The paper mainly focuses on an innovative approach to design inland vessels, which implies
considerable altering of main dimensions of standard vessels, i.e., a reduction of the design draught
followed by an increase of ship beam. As a result of such modifications, the length-to-height ratios of the
proposed novel designs exceed the applicability range of classification rules and the vessels are regarded
as “unconventional” or “unusual”. Consequently, the structural design of novel vessels is to be verified by
direct calculation procedures that include longitudinal strength and buckling calculations, as well as the
use of finite element analysis. The paper discusses challenges in structural design of unconventional inland
vessels and outlines potential benefits. | sr |