FATIGUE RELIABILITY ASSESSMENT OF WELDED JOINTS OF VERY FAST FERRY ACCOUNTING FOR VEHICLE LOADS

Abstract

This work deals with the fatigue reliability assessment of a welded joint in a longitudinal stiffener of trapezoidal shape in a very fast ferry. Based on the analysis of wave and cargo induced loads the ship hull structure is evaluated. The local structure is represented by a longitudinal stiffener with a trapezoidal transverse section. The critical hot-spots and the stress distributions are defined by FEM. The fatigue damage assessment of considered hot spots is analysed accounting for the combination of wave induced and car-breaking transient loadings. The formulation for the assessment of the welded steel joint is based on the S-N approach and FORM/SORM techniques are applied to evaluate the reliability against fatigue failure accounting for corrosion deterioration. The structural system composed by several hot spots is evaluated as a series system based on second order reliability bounds.