Ship grounding accidents continue to dominate ship casualty statistics and may lead to oil spills, vessel capsize following serious flooding, significant asset damage and loss of human life. To date, the influence of grounding events on ship safety as implemented in the IMO Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS) regulatory instrument is based on limited accident statistical datasets. The development of improved ship safety standards requires rapid and reasonably accurate models for use in structural integrity rules and damage stability regulations. This is also important within the context of the development of risk control options and future decision support systems. The goal of this research has been to study the influence of ship hard grounding dynamics by combining principles of marine hydrodynamics, structural crashworthiness and their impact on ship damage stability in a way that is useful within the context of ship design for safety. To achieve this the thesis proposes a rapid Fluid Structure Interaction (FSI) model for the idealization of ship hard grounding dynamics under realistic operating conditions. The model developed is used to demonstrate how existing databases may be updated to account for the influence of deterministic damage extents of passenger vessels following hard grounding.