Analysis of Fatigue Life of Ship Structure Under the Non-Linear Slamming Load

Abstract

As one of the hot topics in ship structures, hull structural fatigue has been widely studied by overseas and domestic scholars in recent years. And fatigue assessment methods can be divided into simplified calculation method and direct calculation method. However most of the calculation methods are based on liner wave load. Some high-speed ships, large external floats and larger ships may have frequent outflows and inflows during the voyage. These ships can be influenced by more serious wave attack. In this situation, the influence of nonlinear slamming load on ship structures cannot be ignored. In this paper, the author selected the deck longitudinal and the bottom longitudinal of the example ship midship section, then calculated the fatigue damage under the action of liner load and total fatigue damage under non-linear slamming load respectively. And the effect of non-linear slamming load on the fatigue life of hull structure can be obtained: it is 49% larger than that without attack fatigue damage in the deck longitudinal, and 35% larger in the bottom longitudinal. Based on the results, the author got the influence coefficient of non-linear slamming load on the fatigue life of the ship. Finally, a nonlinear correction method of fatigue damage is proposed.