Fatigue assessment in shipping is vital in order to predict the structural durability of welded joints. Progress
made during the past decade regarding different approaches was presented
at the seminar "Local Approaches for Fatigue Assessment of Marine
Structures" at Germanischer Lloyd headquarter. The seminar revived
interest from engineers and research scientists from all around the
world: 50 international experts took part in the seminar, coming from
all over Europe and Asia.
Fatigue experts from classification society Germanischer Lloyd, the
Institute of Ship Structural Design & Analysis from Hamburg University
of Technology (TUHH) and Fraunhofer Institute for Structural Durability
and System Reliability LBF gave an extended overview about the
assessment of fatigue behaviour of welded structures. The seminar
focussed on nominal stress, hot-spot, notch stress and strain approaches
as well as crack propagation calculations.
In recent years, progress has been made in the application of fatigue
and fracture assessment procedures facilitating safe and cost effective
decisions in design, material specification and maintenance of
structures. This technology has been applied to ships and other marine
structures.
Sophisticated procedures on how to deal with the avoidance of cracks in
cyclic loaded structural components, the prediction of fatigue lifetime
of marine structures and the verification of damages in view of
appropriate repair measures were presented.
The seminar was part of the European founded research project MARSTRUCT,
a network of excellence with the overall objective to improve the
safety, effectiveness, reliability, environmental behaviour and comfort
of ship structures through the application of advanced structural and
reliability assessment within design, fabrication and operation.