Dynamic Ultimate Strength of a Container Ship Under Sagging Condition

When technically specifying ships for the future, the following aspects are examples of what we will have even more focus on than today: bigger, lighter, and faster. Thereby, the hydro-elastic type of structural response will be more and more significant. In addition, some of the recent container ships’ designs are with very low values of the “minimum hogging still water bending moment.” Combined with high whipping induced sagging moments, it casts some doubts on the probability of buckling appearance in the upper structure. Therefore, the objective of the research work presented in this paper is to investigate the dynamic ultimate strength of the entire hull girder section, subjected to sagging bending moment associated with wave loads and whipping response. The dynamic ultimate strength is computed and compared with the quasi-static ultimate strength, in order to derive the dynamic load factors, which can be used as an estimator of the dynamic collapse effect.