Active trim tabs are a key element of ride control systems on high-speed catamarans, but their hydrodynamic behaviour is more complex than conventional assumptions suggest. Experimental testing reveals that stern-tab effectiveness depends not only on tab angle and speed but also on pressure interactions beneath the hull, offering important insights for improving vessel stability, efficiency, and motion-control performance.

Structural ageing and fatigue remain major challenges for oil tankers, where long-term crack growth can threaten reliability and safety. By combining fracture-mechanics modelling with corrosion progression analysis, engineers gain a clearer understanding of how degradation influences structural life, highlighting the importance of integrating fatigue and corrosion effects into maintenance planning, inspection strategies, and asset management.

As shipyard operations become increasingly complex, understanding and managing safety risks requires approaches that go beyond traditional incident analysis. By combining fault-tree modelling with Formal Safety Assessment in a more structured framework, new methods are identifying hidden interactions and systemic causes of accidents, supporting more effective risk management, regulatory development, and workplace safety improvement.

Passenger safety analysis is becoming increasingly data-driven as evacuation modelling plays a larger role in vessel design and regulation. Drawing on the largest collection of full-scale passenger response data gathered at sea, new evidence suggests that evacuation behaviour varies significantly between ship types, challenging one-size-fits-all assumptions and supporting more realistic emergency preparedness standards.

Passenger evacuation modelling is evolving beyond simplified assumptions, with large-scale sea-trial evidence revealing that response behaviour varies significantly by vessel type, accommodation layout, passenger demographics, and operating conditions. Emerging insights into human behaviour and emergency response are prompting a reassessment of how passenger ship safety is analysed and regulated.

Port congestion is prompting a rethink of voyage planning, with “Virtual Arrival” emerging as a practical way to align sailing schedules with actual port availability. By reducing speed rather than waiting at anchor, operators can cut fuel consumption, lower emissions, ease port congestion, and improve the overall efficiency and sustainability of maritime transport networks.

As vessels increasingly operate in congested and restricted waterways, managing bank effects has become a critical challenge for safe navigation. Advanced CFD analysis of ship-rudder interactions reveals how steering inputs, water depth, and bank proximity combine to influence hydrodynamic forces, providing deeper insight into vessel controllability and the complex mechanisms that contribute to collision risk near channel boundaries.

As pressure grows to balance operational efficiency with environmental performance, understanding vessel wash is becoming increasingly important. Applying advanced wavelet analysis reveals subtle changes in wake behaviour across different operating regimes, vessel characteristics, and water depths, demonstrating a powerful new approach to assessing wash impacts and supporting more informed vessel operation and waterway management.

As emissions regulations continue to tighten, the maritime industry is placing greater emphasis on understanding and reducing engine-related air pollution. Advanced numerical modelling is providing a faster and more cost-effective way to assess emissions-control strategies, highlighting the trade-offs involved in reducing NOx while balancing impacts on overall combustion performance and engine efficiency.

Designing non-transport vessels for long service lives is complicated by evolving market conditions, operational demands, and stakeholder expectations. By applying Epoch-Era Analysis, this work demonstrates how future uncertainty can be incorporated into early-stage design decisions, helping designers evaluate changeability, adaptability, and long-term value rather than optimising solely for immediate requirements.

As CFD emerges as a powerful tool for analysing ship manoeuvring in restricted waters, it is providing new insights into the complex hydrodynamic interactions between vessels, rudders, and channel boundaries. Industry discussion supports the potential of numerical methods to improve understanding of bank effects, while highlighting the importance of incorporating factors such as propeller action, shallow-water conditions, free-surface effects, and experimental validation to ensure reliable application in navigational safety and ship-handling practice.

As coastal communities face increasing exposure to storm impacts and extreme sea states, accurately predicting wave set-up is becoming essential for reliable hazard assessment and coastal infrastructure design. By developing a new framework for estimating wave set-up under random wave conditions, this research highlights the significant influence of wave-spectrum characteristics on coastal water levels and demonstrates the practical application of the method using real-world measurements from diverse coastal environments.