A case study on displacement analysis of Vasa warship

Abstract Monitoring deformation of man-made structures is very important to prevent them from a risk of collapse and save lives. Such a process is also used for monitoring change in historical objects, which are deforming continuously with time. An example of this is the Vasa warship, which was under water for about 300 years. The ship was raised from the bottom of the sea and is kept in the Vasa museum in Stockholm. A geodetic network with points on the museum building and the ship’s body has been established and measured for 12 years for monitoring the ship’s deformation. The coordinate time series of each point on the ship and their uncertainties have been estimated epoch-wisely. In this paper, our goal is to statistically analyse the ship’s hull movements. By fitting a quadratic polynomial to the coordinate time series of each point of the hull, its acceleration and velocity are estimated. In addition, their significance is tested by comparing them with their respective estimated errors after the fitting. Our numerical investigations show that the backside of the ship, having highest elevation and slope, has moved vertically faster than the other places by a velocity and an acceleration of about 2 mm/year and 0.1 mm/year2, respectively and this part of the ship is the weakest with a higher risk of collapse. The central parts of the ship are more stable as the ship hull is almost vertical and closer to the floor. Generally, the hull is moving towards its port and downwards