OE3015

Ship Structural Analysis

From rationally based design methods to hull-girder loads, member strength, and ultimate capacity of the ship structure.

The course develops a rationally based approach to ship structural design — assessing hull-girder loads, the effectiveness of principal members, and ultimate strength — and connects hydrodynamics with structural analysis through computational work.

Course content

Design methods

  • Rationally based ship structural design
  • Probabilistic design methods
  • Sequential linear programming

Hull-girder loads and response

  • Longitudinal strength; still-water and wave-induced shear force and bending moments
  • Shear flow, torsional analysis, and warping
  • Shear stress lag and effective breadth

Local members and plates

  • Bending of stiffened plates
  • Large deflection theory of plates and its applications
  • Buckling of columns, plates, and stiffened panels; effective width

Ultimate strength and FEM

  • Ultimate strength of the hull girder
  • Basics of finite element methods applied to ship structures

Learning objectives

By the end of this course, students will be able to:

  • Understand the rationally based ship structural design
  • Assess the strength of a ship hull girder to still water and wave loads
  • Evaluate the effectiveness of hull girder, hull module and various principal members like columns, stiffened plates
  • Evaluate the safety and reliability of various levels of a ship structure
  • Create a computer program combining hydrodynamics and structural analysis of hull girder loads under the influence of random external wave environment

Video lectures for this course remain available online.

Video lectures

Open the full playlist on YouTube ↗