Recent trends in increasing the size of container vessels (Figure 1), raise the new hydro-structural issues
in ship design both from extreme loading point of view and fatigue point of view. Indeed, due to their
extreme size (almost 400 meters in legnth) these ships become much ”softer” which means that their
hull natural frequencies will be significantly reduced. At the same time ship speed remains relatively
high (around 25 knots) so that the risk of hydroelastic resonance between the waves and the structure
(springing) is present. In addition, due to the very large bow flare of these ships, the importance of
slamming induced vibrations (whipping) is also increased. Finally, local hydroelastic interactions of the
bow structure with extreme slamming pressures, also becomes an important issue. When we know that
even rigid body seakeeping analysis of the ship sailing in waves is still a challenge from modelling point of
view, we can easilly imagine the complexity of the numerical models which need to be put in practice in
order to properly evaluate these hydroelastic effects. The present paper assumes that the seakeeping part
is known and concentrates on hydroelastic aspects of ship-wave interactions only. It is a continuation of
the paper presented at the last Workshop [4]