Ships and marine structures operate on ocean waves during their whole service period. Wave-induced structural loads, hydroelastic vibrations, and deformations of large ships and marine structures should be of concern to the designers and operators. In addition, the transient impact on structures due to the high relative speed between the structure and water surface in harsh waves should be taken into account as it largely increases the transient structural vibration loads (termed as slamming-induced whipping) and may result in global or local structure failure.

In the past decade, a wide variety of hydroelasticity theories have been developed to estimate ship motion, wave loads, and structural deformations in waves, the majority of which are developed in the framework of potential flow theory. Tank model tests and sea trials have also been conducted to experimentally investigate the wave loads and hydroelastic vibrations on ships and offshore structures. However, due to the complexity of the interaction between water waves and arbitrary shape moving floating structures in the presence of free surface and forward speed, the problems of wave-induced structural vibrations, and water impact on ships and marine structures are still far from satisfactorily addressed especially for the problems involving high forward speed, harsh weather, irregular sea waves, and strong nonlinear slamming.

The aim of this Special Issue is to gather original research and review articles discussing predictions of wave-induced structural vibrations and water impacts of ships and marine structures. We welcome theoretical, numerical, and experimental studies. Submissions including novel numerical and experimental tools (e.g., computational fluid dynamics and full-scale testing techniques) addressing the relevant problems are highly encouraged.

Potential topics include but are not limited to the following:

• Fluid flexible structure interactions
• Wave-induced ship structural vibrations
• Wave loads of ships and marine structures
• Ship hydroelasticity theory and experiment
• Springing and whipping responses
• Water entry of ships and marine structures
• Slamming due to water impact
• Segmented model test for hydroelastic responses
• Very large floating structures (VLFS)