Fatigue cracks in steel ships often occur at welded joints where stress concentrations due to the joint geometry are relatively high and the fatigue strength of the weld is reduced in comparison to that of the base metal. This becomes more critical in ships built of High Strength Steels (HSS) because the fatigue strength of steel in the a welded condition does not increase in proportion to the yield or ...
Finite element analysis (FEA) is the most common structural analysis tool in use today. In marine industries, the use of this technique is becoming more widespread in the design, reliability analysis and performance evaluation of ship structures. Users of FEA have considerable freedom in designing the finite element model, exercising it and interpreting the results. Key components of this process include the selection of the computer program, the determination of ...