In this paper, ship accidents are analyzed briefly and the main objective is to investigate a potential technological approach for risk assessment of vessel stability. Ship nonlinear motion equation and main parameters that induce ship capsizing in beam seas have analyzed, the survival probability of a ferry in random status have estimated and finally find out a risk assessment concept for ship's intact stability estimation by safe basin simulation method. Since a few main parameters are considered in the paper, it is expected to be more accurately for estimating ship survival probability when considering ship rolling initial condition and all other impact parameters in the future research.

Vessels stability problems need to resolve the nonlinear mathematical models of rolling motion. For nonlinear systems subjected to random excitations, there are very few special cases can obtain the exact solutions. In this paper, the specific differential equations of rolling motion for intact ship considering the restoring and damping moment have researched firstly. Then the partial stochastic linearization method is applied to study the response statistics of nonlinear ship rolling motion in beam seas. The ship rolling nonlinear stochastic differential equation is then solved approximately by keeping the equivalent damping coefficient as a parameter and nonlinear response of the ship is determined in the frequency domain by a linear analysis method finally.

Prediction of the stability for ships is very complex in reality. In this paper, risk based approach is applied to predict the probability of capsize for a certified ship, which is effected by the forces of sea especially the wave loading Safety assessment and risk analysis process are also applied for the probabilistic prediction of stability for ships. The probability of shipsencountering different waves at sea is calculated by the existed statistics data and risk based models. Finally, ship capsizing probability is calculated according to single degree of freedom(SDF) rolling differential equation and basin erosion theory of nonlinear dynamics. Calculation results show that the survival probabilities of ship excited by the forces of the seas, especially in the beam seas status, can be predicted by the risk based method.