Reliability-based design guidelines for fatigue of ship structures

摘要

Marine and offshore structures are subjected to fatigue loadings primarily due to the action of seawater waves and the sea environment in general. The load cycles in such an environment can be in the order of a million cycles per year. Fatigue failures in these structures can take place at sites of high stress concentration that can be classified by two major categories: baseplate and weldments. The former includes locations of high stress concentration such as openings, sharp re-entry corners, and plate edges. In general, the mecha- nisms behind these failures are described by the general approaches to fatigue life prediction as discusses in this paper.