Abstract
The safety of ships is one of the most important concerns in terms of the environment and human life. A ship in bad condition is likely to be subject to accidents, such as collision and grounding. When a ship has minor collision damages in the form of circle or ellipse, its ultimate strength will be reduced. It is important to evaluate the reduction ratio of a ship's ultimate strength that results from damages. The strength reduction of a plate with a cutout in the form of hole has been treated by many researchers. A closed-form formula for the reduction of ultimate strength of a plate, considering the effect of several forms of cutout, has been suggested. However, the structure of ships is composed of plates and stiffeners so-called stiffened plates and it is likely that plates and stiffeners will be damaged together in collisions. This paper investigates the effect of minor collision damages on the ultimate strength of a stiffened plate by using numerical analysis. For this study, the deformed shape of minor collision damages on a stiffened plate was made by using a contact algorithm and was used as the initial shape for ultimate stress analysis. Then, a series of nonlinear FE analyses was conducted to investigate the reduction effects on the ultimate strength of the stiffened plate. The boundary conditions were simply supported at all boundaries, and the tripping of stiffener was neglected. The results are presented in the form of reduction ratio between the ultimate strength of an original, intact stiffened plate and that of a damaged stiffened plate.
