Wide variety of fender products has been proposed. They can be roughly classified into two categories. One is buckling type fender, the other is pneumatic type fender. The buckling type is advantageous in view that they have high energy absorption performance since they buckle when deflection of the fender is large. The pneumatic type is advantageous in view that reaction force of the fender is small when denection of the fender is small, which results in small amplitude of moored ships or floating bodies in horizontal direction. In this study, a hybrid type fender is proposed. The hybrid type fender is acombination of the buckling type fender and the pneumatic type fender which are put together in serial. A mechanical stopper is equipped with at the pneumatic type fender. As long as deflection of the fender is small, the fender has almost the same characteristic as the pneumatic fender. However, once the deflection is over a defined point, the stopper works and the fender has a characteristic as the buckling type. Therefore, the hybrid type fender has advantages of both of the pneumatic type and the buckling type.
　In fiscal year 2001, the hybrid type fender was experimentally applied to the mooring system of megafloat which was utilized as information backup center and installed in Yokosuka port. Deflection and reaction force of fenders were measured through the duration pf the on-site experiment. A numerical simulation is conducted for interpretation of the experimental results. The numerical simulation is also applied to the cases when a cargo ship is moored at quay by use of the hybrid type fender. It is shown that the fender is effective from the viewpoint of decrement of the horizontal motion of the ship. In order to understand behavior of the hybrid type fender, a compression test was conducted under several conditions by using a scaled model.