Structural Capacity of The Hull Girder

Technical University of Denmark
Structural Capacity
of the Hull Girder
Lars Peter Nielsen

October 1998
Department of
Naval Architecture
And Offshore Engineering
Structural Capacity of the Hull Girder
Lars Peter Nielsen

M.Sc. in Engineering
DEPARTMENT OF NAVAL ARCHITECTURE AND OFFSHORE ENGINEERING

TECHNICAL UNIVERSITY OF DENMARK LYNGBY
OCTOBER 1998
Department of Naval Architecture and Oshore Engineering
Building 101E, DK-2800 Lyngby, Denmark
Phone +45 4525 1360, Telefax +45 4588 4325
email ish@ish.dtu.dk, Internet http://www.ish.dtu.dk
Published in Denmark by
c L. P. Nielsen 1998
All right reserved. Copying of the full extent of this publication

(including this notice) in any form and by any means, is hereby
grated. However, no single part of this publication may be repro-
duced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or
by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or
otherwise, without the prior permission of the Department of Naval
Architecture and Oshore Engineering.
Publication Reference Data

Nielsen, L. P.
Structural Capacity of the Hull Girder.
Ph.D. Thesis | 211 pages.
Department of Naval Architecture and Oshore Engineering,
Technical University of Denmark, October, 1998.
ISBN 87-89502-03-5
Keywords: Ultimate Capacity, Strength, Combined Loading,
Damaged Condition, Beam-Column.
Typeset in Times Roman using LATEX and printed by LTT Tryk, Lyngby, Denmark.
The cover illustration shows a cross section in a typical very large crude carrier (VLCC)
double hull structure | c Hugo Heinicke 1998.
Preface
This thesis is submitted as partial fulllment of the requirements for the Danish Ph.D. degree.
The research documented has been performed at the Department of Naval Architecture and
Oshore Engineering (ISH), Technical University of Denmark (DTU), and at the Department
of Naval Architecture and Oshore Engineering (NAOE), University of California at Berkeley
(UCB). The work was initiated on October 1st 1994 and concluded on June 30th 1998.
The supervisory committee counts Professor Preben Terndrup Pedersen, Associate Professor
Jrgen Juncher Jensen, and Associate Professor Peter Friis Hansen { all faculty members
at ISH. Supervision was further received from Professor Alaa Mansour, faculty member of
NAOE1 during my stay at UCB.
Financial support has been received from:
The Danish Technical Research Council (STVF),

The Department of Naval Architecture and Oshore Engineering
Technical University of Denmark,
Civilingenir Kristian Rasmussen og hustru Gunild Katrine Rasmussens Fond,
Knud Hjgaards Fond, and
The Danish Society for Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering
and is greatly acknowledged.
Further, a special thanks to all of my colleagues at ISH, friends and family, and especially
to my supervisors for invaluable help and support.
Lars Peter Nielsen

October, 1998
1 At present Professor Alaa Mansour is a faculty member of the Mechanical Engineering (ME) department
at University of California at Berkeley (UCB)
i
ii Preface
This page is intentionally left blank.

Executive Summary
This thesis addresses the structural performance of the hull structure of a vessel in the
extreme response state of a combined loading consisting of moment, shear, torque, and hy-
drostatic pressure. The research is part of a larger study on Marine Structural Design aiming
at the establishment of a rational, computer-based analysis system for marine structures.
The motivation for conducting this research task is the importance of the ultimate and post-
ultimate strength in relation to the reliability of intact as well as damaged vessels. Moreover,
in an emergency situation, knowledge of the structural capacity of the vessel in whatever
damaged or intact condition it may be in, is crucial to allow for a rational decision to be
made regarding possible salvage, or at worst disembarkation of the crew, in the interest of
safety for human life, environmental protection, and capital investment.
The common denominator for both these spheres of interest, i.e. reliability and emergency
response, is the absolute requirement of rapid calculations. In the case of reliability assess-
ment, simulations requiring vast numbers of ultimate capacity evaluations are frequently the
tool employed to establish the reliability index of the vessel. Thus, a speedy procedure for
structural analysis is a prerequisite for fast reliability assessment. Concerning emergency
response, then huge investments and human safety are at stake. Time becomes an obstacle,
and an ill informed decision may prove to have dire consequences. Quick formation of a
rational basis for decision making thus becomes of paramount importance.
To facilitate these requirements, the overall objective of the present research therefore be-
comes to build a rapid computer based analysis tool for calculation of the ultimate and
post-ultimate capacity of the hull girder in the general state of combined loading consisting
of moment, shear, torque, and hydrostatic pressure. Then, to verify the accuracy of the
procedure against available experimental results and by comparison with other theoretical
results. To meet this objective essentially requires three sub-tasks to be completed. Hence,
the scope of the work becomes
1. A study of literature for the available methods usable to evaluate the ultimate and
post-ultimate capacity. This study will reveal three possible candidates: The nite
element method (FEM), the idealized structural unit method (ISUM), and the beam-
column method. To select among these three methods, available comparative studies
are reviewed. Based on the ndings in those, the beam-column method is chosen for
further use in the present research project.
iii
iv Executive Summary
2. Development of a scheme for the evaluation of the ultimate and post-ultimate ca-
pacity of the hull girder, utilizing the beam-column approach. Assuming that the
load-displacement response of any beam-column is known beforehand, further prereq-
uisites and assumptions must be identied and decided on. Based on this, a scheme
suitable for implementation in a computer code must be established.
3. Establishment of a framework designed to evaluate the load-displacement response of a
beam-column. Key eects must be identied and if possible, included in the procedure.
Through this work, a procedure relying on the beam-column approach and the asymmetrical
forced curvature principle has been established. The procedure is capable of accounting for
the following key aspects:
Overall System Modeling:

{ General combined loading consisting of moment, shear, and torque.
{ Asymmetrical cross section description.
{ Direct calculated instantaneous beam-column load-displacement response.
Beam-Column Modeling:
{ Dierent yield stress for the plating and the stiener.
{ Beam-column specic modulus of elasticity and shear modulus.
{ Initial de ection of the beam-column.
{ Pressure loading on the beam-column.
{ Beam-columns without a stiener, i.e. plating alone.
The following eects are however ignored in the present formulation:
Load Modeling:
{ The warping part of the torsional moment.
{ Interaction between the bending moment and the shear forces.
{ Redistribution of shear stresses after ultimate capacity.
Beam-Column Modeling:
{ Necking of the beam-column.
{ Tripping of the stiener.
{ Residual welding stresses.
{ Initial de ection of the plating.
Executive Summary v
The present procedure has then successfully been applied to two test-cases. The rst of
these was one of the so called Nishihara box girders investigated by Nishihara [31] both
by experiment and an analytic approach. The second test case was a double hull tanker
structure analyzed by Melchior Hansen [17] for combined vertical shear force and bending
loading. From the ndings in these two test-cases, it has been concluded that the present
procedure is indeed capable of accurately predicting the ultimate and post-ultimate strength
of the intact hull girder.
A new test-case has then been selected for a more detailed investigation. The vessel chosen
for this part of the work is a design study of an ultra large crude carrier (ULCC). Thus,
the vessel has newer actually been build. However, it has been scantled in accordance with
the classication rules for steel ships issued by Det Norske Veritas [7]. The purpose of the
investigations performed on this ultra large crude carrier has been twofold: The rst has
been to illustrate the present procedures ability to handle asymmetrical bending of an intact
vessel and hydrostatic pressure loading. The second has been to demonstrate the present
procedures applicability to the analysis of a vessel in a damaged condition. Towards this
end, the following four scenarios have been analyzed:
1. Intact, as-build condition.

2. Ballast condition.
3. Grounding damaged condition.
4. Fire and explosion damaged condition.
The response hereby obtained has been found to be in accordance with the expected behavior
of the midship section. Thus, based on the ndings in these four test-cases, it has been
concluded that the present procedure is capable of predicting the ultimate and post-ultimate
strength of the damaged hull girder.
Finally, the possible substitution of the present procedure by a simple moment interaction
formula has been investigated for the intact, as-build condition. This eort has however
proven disappointing, as the highly nonlinear sagging response of the ultra large crude carrier
predicted by the present procedure, eliminates any such simple formulation. It has therefore
been concluded that substituting the present procedure by a simple interaction formula,
although being an unarguably much faster approach, is a not recommendable practice in the
quest for rapid evaluation of the ultimate hull girder strength.
vi Executive Summary

Synopsis
Denne afhandling omhandler den strukturelle opfrelse af et skibs skrogstruktur i den ek-
streme design tilstand af en kombineret last bestaende af moment, forskydning, torsion og
hydrostatisk tryk. Forskningsarbejdet er del af et strre studie over maritime konstruktioner,
som sigter mod etableringen af et rationelt, computerbaseret analyse system for maritime
konstruktioner.
Motivationen for at udfre dette forskningsarbejde er den ultimative og post-ultimative
styrkes vigtighed for palideligheden af savel intakte som skadede skibe. Ydermere, i en
ndsituation, vil kendskab til den strukturelle kapacitet af skibet i dets enten skadede eller
intakte tilstand, vre altafgrende for at kunne tre en beslutning om mulig bjrgn-
ing eller, i vrste fald, redning af bestningen, med henblik pa menneskelig sikkerhed,
miljbeskyttelse og konomi.
Fllesnvneren for begge disse interesseomrader, palidelighed og ndberedskab, er det ab-
solutte krav om hurtige beregninger. I palidelighedsanalyser er simulationer, der krver et
stort antal af ultimative kapacitets beregninger ofte det vrktj der bliver anvendt til at
etablere palidelighedsindekset for et skib. Derfor er en hurtig procedure for den strukturelle
analyse en forudstning for en hurtig palidelighedsanalyse. Angaende ndberedskab, sa er
der her store investeringer og menneskelig sikkerhed pa spil. Tid bliver en forhindring og en
fejlinformeret beslutning kan vise sig at have frygtelige konsekvenser. Hurtig etablering af
en rationel basis, hvorfra beslutninger kan tres, bliver derfor af yderste vigtighed.
For at kunne imdekomme disse krav bliver malet for det nrvrende forskningsarbejde
derfor at bygge et computerbaseret analysevrktj, der kan beregne den ultimative og post-
ultimative styrke af skibsskrogbjlken i den generelle kombinerede lastkondition bestaende
af moment, forskydning, torsion og hydrostatisk tryk. Derefter, at vericere njagtigheden
af proceduren mod tilgngelige eksperimentelle resultater og ved sammenligning med andre
teoretiske resultater. At opna dette mal krver basalt set lsning af tre underopgaver:
1. Et litteraturstudie for de tilgngelige metoder der kan anvendes til at bestemme den
ultimative og post-ultimative kapacitet. Dette studie vil fremkomme med tre mulige
kandidater: De endelige elementers metode (FEM), den idealiserede strukturelle dels
metode (ISUM) og bjlkesjlemetoden. For at kunne vlge mellem disse tre metoder
er tilgngelige sammenlignings-studier blevet gennemgaet. Baseret pa disse fundne
resultater, er bjlkesjlemetoden blive valgt til det nrvrende forskningsarbejde.
vii
viii Synopsis
2. Udvikling af en plan for beregning af den ultimative og post-ultimative kapacitet af
skrogbjlken under anvendelse af bjlkesjlemetoden. Under antagelse af, at arbe-
jdskurven for en hvilken som helst bjlkesjle er kendt pa forhand, ma yderligere
forudstninger og antagelser identiceres og bestemmes. Baseret pa dette ma en bereg-
ningsstrategi, der er egnet for implementering i et computerprogram, blive etableret.
3. Etablering af en strategi for beregning af arbejdskurven for en bjlkesjle. Vigtige
eekter pa denne ma identiceres og om muligt inkluderes i beregningsstrategien.
Gennem dette arbejde er en procedure der anvender bjlkesjlemetoden og det asymmetriske

tvungne krumnings princip blevet etableret. Proceduren er i stand til at medtage flgende
ngleeekter:
Overordnet systemmodellering:
{ Generel kombineret last bestaende af moment, forskydning og torsion.
{ Asymmetrisk tvrsnitsbeskrivelse.
{ Direkte beregnet jeblikkelig bjlkesjle-arbejdskurve.
Bjlkesjlemodellering:
{ Forskellig ydespnding for plade og stiver.
{ Bjlkesjlespecik elasticitetsmodul og forskydningsmodul.
{ Initiel udbjning af bjlkesjlen.
{ Tryklast pa bjlkesjlen.
{ Bjlkesjler uden stiver, dvs. plader alene.
Flgende eekter er imidlertid ignoreret i den nrvrende formulering:
Lastmodellering:
{ Hvlvings delen af torsionsmomentet.
{ Sammenvirket mellem det bjende moment og forskydningskrfterne.
{ Refordelingen af forskydningsspndingerne.
Bjlkesjlemodellering:
{ Indsnvring af bjlkesjlen i trk.
{ Kipning af stiveren.
{ Svejsespndinger.
{ Initiel udbjning af pladefeltet.
Synopsis ix
Nrvrende procedure har herefter vret anvendt pa to testmodeller med succes. Den
frste af disse var en af de sakaldte Nishihara kassedragere undersgt af Nishihara [31]
bade eksperimentelt og analytisk. Den anden model var en dobbeltskroget tanker som er
analyseret af Melchior Hansen [17] for kombineret vertikal forskydning og bjende moment.
Pa baggrund af resultaterne opnaet i disse to testtilflde er det blevet konkluderet, at
nrvrende procedure er i stand til njagtigt at forudsige den ultimative og post-ultimative
styrke af den intakte skrogbjlke.
En ny testmodel er derefter blevet udvalgt for en mere grundig undersgelse. Skibet valgt
til denne del af forskningsarbejdet er et designstudie af en ultra stor olie tanker (ULCC).
Flgelig er skibet aldrig blevet bygget. Imidlertid er det blevet dimensioneret i henhold
til klassikationsreglerne for stalskibe udsendt af Det Norske Veritas [7]. Formalet med
undersgelserne udfrt for denne olietanker har vret dobbelt. Den frste har vret at vise
at nrvrende procedures evne til at handtere asymmetrisk bjning af et intakt skib tillige
med hydrostatisk tryklast. Den anden har vret at demonstrere den nrvrende procedures
anvendelighed pa skadede skibe. I den retning er flgende re scenarier blevet analyseret:
1. Intakt kondition.
2. Ballast kondition.
3. Grundstdningsskadet kondition.
4. Brand- og eksplosionsskadet kondition.
Det herved opnaede gensvar er blevet fundet i overensstemmelse med den forventede opfrelse
af midtskibssektionen. Flgelig er det, baseret pa resultatet af de re testmodeller, blevet
konkluderet at den nrvrende procedure ogsa er istand til at forudsige den ultimative og
post-ultimative styrke af den skadede skrogbjlke.
Endelig er muligheden for en substituering af den nrvrende procedure med en simpel
moment interaktionsformel blevet undersgt for den intakte kondition. Dette har imidlertid
vist sig skuende, idet den meget ikke-linere sagging opfrelse af olie tankeren, forudsagt
af den nrvrende procedure, eliminerer muligheden for en sadan simpel formulering. Det
er derfor blevet konkluderet, at erstatning af den nrvrende procedure med en simpel
interaktionsformel, selvom det uomtvisteligt er en meget hurtigere metode, ikke er tilradelig
praksis i bestrbelsen for hurtig evaluering af den ultimative styrke af skrogbjlken.
x Synopsis

Contents
Preface i
Executive Summary iii
Synopsis (in Danish) vii
Contents x
Symbols and Nomenclature xvii
1 Introduction 1
1.1 Overview and Project Aliation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.2 Background . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.3 Motivation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
1.4 Objective and Scope of Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.5 Organization of the Thesis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
2 Ultimate and Post-Ultimate Capacity of the Hull Girder 7

2.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
2.2 Longitudinal Strength . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
2.3 Ultimate Longitudinal Strength . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
2.4 Ultimate and Post-Ultimate Strength . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
2.5 Pre-Selection of Method . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
xi
xii Contents
3 Ultimate and Post-Ultimate Capacity of a Laser Welded Panel 15
3.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
3.2 Denition of Laser Welded Panel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
3.3 Summary of Performed Calculations and Methods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
3.4 Basis for Comparison of Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
3.5 Discussion of the Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
3.6 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
3.6.1 The Finite Element Methods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
3.6.2 The Beam-Column and Idealized Structural Unit Methods . . . . . . 28
4 The Beam-Column Method 31

4.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
4.2 Load Description . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
4.2.1 Load Interpretation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
4.2.2 Load Modeling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
4.2.3 Accidental Loads & Probabilistic Reliability Analysis . . . . . . . . . 38
4.3 System Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
4.3.1 Pure Horizontal Bending . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
4.3.2 Beam-Column End Displacement and Rotation . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
4.3.3 General Load Condition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
4.4 Ultimate Capacity Criterions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
4.4.1 Ultimate Shear Capacity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
4.4.2 Ultimate Moment Capacity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
4.5 Implementation Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
4.6 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
Contents xiii
5 Beam-Columns in Combined Loading 53
5.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
5.2 Initial Imperfections . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
5.3 Idealized Beam-Column Behavior . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
5.4 Plastic Tension Region . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
5.5 Elastic Tension Region . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
5.5.1 Stress Assessment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
5.6 Elastic Compression Region . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
5.6.1 Marguerre's Equations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
5.6.2 Application { The von Karman Equations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
5.6.3 Post-Buckling Behavior { The Perturbation Technique . . . . . . . . 62
5.6.4 Boundary Conditions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
5.6.5 Collapse Criterion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
5.6.6 Plate Buckling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
5.6.7 Plate Collapse . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
5.6.8 Stress Assessment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
5.7 Plastic Compression Region (Unloading) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
5.8 Limitations of Method . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
5.9 Implementation Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
5.10 Test Application of the Procedure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
5.11 Beam-Columns without Stieners . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
5.11.1 Overall Buckling Mechanism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
5.11.2 Local Folding Mechanism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
5.11.3 Comparison . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
5.12 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
xiv Contents
6 Verication of the Procedure 93
6.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
6.2 Nishihara Box Girders . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
6.2.1 Model description . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
6.2.2 Collapse Analyzes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96
6.2.3 Discussion of the Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100
6.3 Double Hull Tanker . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
6.3.1 Model Description . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
6.3.2 Combined Loading Analyzes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
6.3.3 Discussion of the Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
6.4 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106
7 Application of the Procedure 109

7.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
7.2 Ultra Large Crude Carrier . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110
7.3 As-Build Condition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112
7.3.1 Moment Interaction Formulas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
7.4 Ballast Condition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121
7.5 Grounding Damage Condition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124
7.6 Fire and Explosion Damage Condition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
7.7 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133
7.8 Final Assessment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135
8 Conclusion and Recommendations 137

8.1 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137
8.2 Recommendation for Future Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139
Contents xv
A The Asymmetrical Forced Curvature Principle 141
A.1 Purpose & Objective . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141
A.2 Plane Geometric Description . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142
A.2.1 Beam-Column End De ection and Rotation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143
A.3 Local Beam-Column Description . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144
A.3.1 Eective Beam-Column End Rotation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144
A.4 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146
B Solution to the Classical Beam-Column Problem 149

B.1 Purpose & Objective . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149
B.2 Beam Dierential Equation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150
B.3 De ection Solution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150
B.4 Sectional Moment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153
B.5 Midspan Stress Distribution in Beam-Column . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154
B.6 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157
C Solution of the von Karman Equations 159

C.1 Purpose & Objective . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159
C.2 The Finite Dierence Method . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160
C.3 Buckling Behavior . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161
C.3.1 Buckling Solution Scheme . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 162
C.3.2 Implementation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163
C.3.3 Buckling Coecients . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165
C.3.4 Buckling Interaction in Combined Loading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 166
C.4 Post-Buckling Behavior . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172
C.4.1 Post-Buckling Solution Scheme . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174
C.4.2 Implementation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175
C.5 Verication of Collapse Criterion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181
C.6 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 184
xvi Contents
D Alternative Modeling of the Idealized Beam-Column Behavior 187
D.1 Purpose & Objective . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187
D.2 Basic Idea . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187
D.3 The Beam Dierential Equation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189
D.4 Solution Method . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 190
D.5 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191
Bibliography 193
List of Figures 199
List of Tables 209
List of Ph.D. Theses Available from the Department 213
Symbols and Nomenclature
The symbols used in this thesis are explained when they are rst introduced. The following
is a list of the main symbols used. The list is divided into a general section followed by topic
specic sections. Finally, a section with notation notes is included.
General
A area
E Young's modulus { modulus of elasticity
I moment of inertia { second moment of area
M moment
N normal force
P direct load
Q shear force
x coordinate
y coordinate
z coordinate
" strain
"y yield strain
curvature
Poisson's ratio
stress
cr critical
q stress
v = x2 + z2 , x z + 3xz
2 (von Mises stress)
y yield stress
shear stress
cr critical shear stress
y yield shear stress
xvii
xviii Symbols and Nomenclature
Hull Denition
B breadth of vessel
D depth of vessel
L length of vessel
Mhog hogging moment
Msag sagging moment
Mp plastic moment
My rst yield moment
My horizontal moment
Mz vertical moment
Mx torsional moment { torque
N normal force
Qy horizontal shear force
Qz vertical shear force
x coordinate { length direction
y coordinate { width direction
z coordinate { height direction
r displacement
Plate Denition
b width of plate
= Et 2 (plate stiness)
3
D 12(1 , )
K = Et 2
(1 , )
KT = Et
2(1 + )
kz direct buckling coecient
kxz shear buckling coecient
` length of plate
Nx direct edge line load { length-wise
Nz direct edge line load { width-wise
Nxz shear edge line load
t thickness of plate
Symbols and Nomenclature xix
u in-plane displacement { width-wise
u~ shape of in-plane displacement { width-wise
v in-plane displacement { length-wise
v~ shape of in-plane displacement { length-wise
w out-of-plane de ection
w~ shape of out-of-plane de ection
x coordinate { width direction
Y in-plane normal load
y coordinate { thickness direction
y? initial out-of-plane de ection
z coordinate { length direction
" perturbation parameter or strain
"c perturbation parameter at collapse
arbitrary scaling parameter
stress function (;xx = Nz ; ;zz = Nx ; ;zx = ,Nxz )
' tan(') = Nz =Nxz (direct/shear load ratio)
ec mean axial edge stress at collapse
ac mean axial stress at collapse
x direct stress { width-wise
z direct stress { length-wise
xz shear stress
z;cr critical direct stress
xz;cr critical shear stress
sc mean shear stress at collapse
Finite Dierence
h size of cell
i node { width-wise
j node { length-wise
M dimension of grid { width-wise
N dimension of grid { length-wise
ui;j in-plane displacement at node i; j
vi;j in-plane displacement at node i; j
wi;j out-of-plane de ection at node i; j
eigenvector
eigenvalue
xx Symbols and Nomenclature
Beam-Column Denition
A total cross sectional area
As cross sectional area of stiener
Ap cross sectional area of plate
H total height of beam-column
` length of beam-column
Pcr critical direct
2 load
PE = EI
` (Euler load)
Py = yA (squash load)
q uniformly distributed line-load
w de ection
w0 initial
s de ection
= jP j
EI
instantaneous rotation
end displacement
' end rotation
"t strain at tension collapse
"u strain at compression collapse
xx direct stress
Global System Analysis

M moment response of beam-column
P direct response of beam-column (force)
x global coordinate { length-wise
y global coordinate { breadth-wise
y0 principal coordinate { breadth-wise
z global coordinate { depth-wise
z0 principal coordinate { depth-wise
angle of instantaneous neutral axis
rotation of cross section plane
i end displacement of ith beam-column
i arm to ith beam-column
INA perpendicular distance from instanta-
neous neutral axis to center of baseline
Symbols and Nomenclature xxi
Ultimate Capacity Description
MINA total moment reponse about the instantaneous neutral axis of the cross section
MINA,u ultimate moment about the instantaneous neutral axis of the cross section
Mx,u ultimate torsional moment, i.e. about the global x-axis
My,u ultimate horizontal moment, i.e. about the global y-axis
Mz,u ultimate vertical moment, i.e. about the global z-axis
Qy,u ultimate horizontal shear force, i.e. in the global y-direction
Qz,u ultimate vertical shear force, i.e. in the global z-direction
u ultimate shear stress distribution
Notes
(a) For derivatives of single variable functions the prime notation is used. That is,
f 0(x) = dfdx
(x)
For derivatives of multi variable functions the comma notation, e.g.
f;x = @f@x(x) or f;xz = @f@x@z

2 (x)
(b) Functions/expressions evaluated at a specic value is indicated by a vertical bar

followed by the value of the specic variable, e.g.
Z
f (x)dx
x=a
(c) Vectors are in the text written in bold normal, e.g. X = (X1; X2; : : : ; Xn). In
drawings and sketches an arrow over the letter is used to indicate vectors.
(d) Matrixes are written like vectors, but with a bar below, e.g. A.
(e) Inverse matrixes are denoted by `-1', e.g. A,1 .
(f) Zero vectors are denoted by a bold zero, i.e. 0 = (0; 0; : : : ; 0).
xxii Symbols and Nomenclature

Chapter 1
Introduction
: : : to encourage and facilitate the general adoption of the highest practicable
standards in matters concerning maritime safety, eciency of navigation and
prevention and control of marine pollution from ships.
Extract of Article 1(a)
The IMO Convention
March 1948
1.1 Overview and Project Aliation

This thesis addresses the structural performance of the hull structure of a vessel in the
extreme response state of a combined loading. The research is part of a larger study on
Marine Structural Design aiming at the establishment of a rational, computer-based analysis
system for marine structures. Within this project, the thesis is closely related to the work of
Melchior Hansen [17] on \Reliability Methods for the Longitudinal Strength of Ships" and may
be seen as a continuation of this research. Further, the present work may oer contributions
to the works of Friis Hansen [18] on \Reliability Analysis of a Midship Section" and of Cerup
Simonsen [43] on \Mechanics of Ship Grounding".
1.2 Background
The structural design of any vessel is strongly regulated both by class rules and regulations
from both national and international authorities. All this goes to insure safe operation within
an acceptable safety level of the vessel. While it is mainly the task of the authorities to set
the standards for what constitutes an acceptable safety level, it falls upon the classication
societies to formulate the appropriate design rules insuring this level of safety.
1
2 Chapter 1. Introduction
Focusing on the design rules, these are chie y based on rational design principles developed
over the years and are continually revised and updated according to the latest achievements
in knowledge. Hence, for the structural aspects of a vessel, the fulllment of the class rules
insures safe operation given a specic design load level also set by the class rules.
Thus, it can reasonably be expected that a vessel will not undergo buckling/plastic collapse
while the working load is below the design load. However, there is a risk that the vessel
will experience extreme loading conditions far beyond the design load in an unintended,
accidental, or emergency situation.
On July 21st 1980, the VLCC Energy Concentration broke into two during discharge of oil
at Rotterdam, The Netherlands. This is an excellent illustration of how irresponsible cargo
handling caused transgressing of the design load and is well documented by Rutherford
and Caldwell [42]. Collision and grounding also constitutes a dangerous situation for any
vessel, as it did on the morning of March 24th 1989, where the VLCC Exxon Valdez went
aground onto a reef and spilled some 10.1 million barrels of oil into Prince William Sound,
Alaska, USA. Although she suered extensive damage to her hull, overall structural integrity
remained uncompromised by the accident. Less fortunate was the oil tanker Braer, which
on January 5th 1993 ran aground o Sumburgh Head in Shetland, UK. Seven days later, on
January 12th she broke up into three sections after having been continually thrown against
the rocks of the island and the entire cargo of some 620 thousand barrels of oil was spilled
into the sea around the southern end of the main Shetland Island.
These are just a few examples of real accidents arising from cargo handling and grounding.
Other probable causes could be e.g. severe weather conditions, re, explosions, etc. Also,
the aspects of corrosion damage and fatigue cracking may solely be responsible for { or an
attributing factor in { exceeding the design load of any vessel. Freak occurrences like the
breaking into two of the container vessel MSC Carla on the November 24th 1997 falls into
this last category. Although the exact cause of the loss has not been ascertained as of yet, it
is known that the twenty-ve year old vessel experienced heavy weather in the north Atlantic
on its nal voyage from Le Havre, France to Boston, USA. The vessel had twelve years into
its service life been re-tted with a new container hold. Further, she was tted with an
exceptional power plant of some 75; 000 bhp, which made her capable of sustained service
speeds in excess of 30 knots. Now, the correlation between high age and corrosion, high
speed and fatigue, together with the changing of the initial design loads caused by the added
new container hold, all puts the loss of the MSC Carla in lot with the above mentioned
probable causes. Thus, until the exact cause of failure is identied, she serves as a perfect
example of all but re and explosion.
1.3 Motivation
In an emergency situation at sea, the course of best action to save crew, cargo, and ship,
while protecting the marine environment, may not immediately be obvious. Time wasted
1.4. Objective and Scope of Work 3
or an ill-informed decision made, could cause irretrievable damage. Hence, precise technical
information about the ship and its damage condition will be of paramount importance in
restraining the crisis.
Grounding and collision, re and explosion, all presents extreme crisis situations for vessels at
sea. Time becomes an obstacle, as each passing minute several factors may worsen. Possible
oil out ow, water ingress and the ships damage stability may all be worsening, particularly
if exacerbated by heavy weather or strong tides.
To lessen the consequences of casualty at sea, a full appreciation of the vessels damaged
stability and damaged strength is essential before decisions are taken about transferring
cargo or initiating other remedial actions to salvage the vessel. Thus, using a computer
model of the vessel which will allow rapid calculation of damage stability, damage strength,
and damage oatability, will render the possibility of determining how the vessel will respond
under various rescue scenarios, and hereby enable the crew to make the best possible decision
in selecting a rescue option. Further, pre-analyzes of likely emergency scenarios are advisable
to keep on the vessel for ready reference during a crisis when human stress factors and
time limitations might impair crew actions. This preparation is part of standard crisis
management planning required by MARPOL1 73/78 and OPA2 '90.
Hence, it is of interest to develop an ecient computer code suitable for repeated structural
analyzes of intact as well as damaged ship structures with dierent stages of corrosion.
Further, such a tool will also be of great value in the evaluation of the reliability of ship
structures. Here it is necessary to have a tool which can calculate the strength of the hull.
Together with a probabilistic method for evaluation of the probability that the loading on the
hull exceeds the strength the reliability of the vessel can be established. Such probabilistic
analyzes demand much computational work. Therefore, it is important that the underlying
ultimate strength analyzes can be performed fast and eective. Just as it is the requirement
in the case of emergency scenarios. This observation is substantiated by current eorts by
e.g. Paik et al. [35], Paik and Terndrup Pedersen [33] and Paik and Mansour [32] where
a simple formulation for the evaluation of the ultimate strength is applied to predict the
residual strength of e.g. grounded ship hulls.
1.4 Objective and Scope of Work

The overall objective is therefore to build a rapid computer based analysis tool for calcu-
lation of the ultimate and post-ultimate capacity of the hull girder. Then, to verify the
accuracy of the procedure against available experimental results and by comparison with
other theoretical results.
1 International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution from Ships, IMO, 1973/1978.
2 Oil Pollution Act of 1990, USA, 1990.
To meet this objective essentially requires three sub-tasks to be completed. Hence, the scope
of the work to be performed becomes
1. A study of literature for the available methods usable to evaluate the ultimate and
post-ultimate capacity. This study will reveal three possible candidates: The nite
element method (FEM), the idealized structural unit method (ISUM), and the beam-
column method. To select among these three methods, available comparative studies
are reviewed. Based on the ndings in those, the beam-column method will be chosen
for further use in the present research project.
2. Development of a scheme for the evaluation of the ultimate and post-ultimate capacity,
utilizing the beam-column approach. Assuming that the load-displacement response
of any beam-column is known beforehand, further prerequisites and assumptions must
be identied and decided on. Based on this, a scheme suitable for implementation in
a computer code must be established.
3. Establishment of a framework designed to evaluate the load-displacement response of a
beam-column. Key eects must be identied and if possible, included in the procedure.
When these three points have been addressed, and the objectives solved, all that is needed
for the development of a computer code for the ultimate strength is readily available. The
remaining nal task will thus be to benchmark the code against available experimental results
and other theoretical results.
1.5 Organization of the Thesis

The thesis is compiled as follows: First, a general introduction to the ultimate and post-
ultimate capacity of vessels is given in Chapter 2. The historical development of the methods
for evaluating the ultimate strength of ships is reviewed, and state-of-the-art is identied
along with the pros and cons for each method. Based on the ndings in this chapter, the
beam-column method is pre-selected for further investigation.
Chapter 3 therefore continues to investigate the accuracy of dierent methods for the pre-
diction of the ultimate and post-ultimate capacity of a stiened panel, to rearm the choice
of the beam-column method. This is based on the works of the Technical Committee III.1
of ISSC'97 [12] to which the author has contributed.
In Chapter 4 a scheme for evaluating the ultimate and post-ultimate capacity of the midship
cross section based on the beam-column method is formulated. The formulation for this
scheme is continued in Chapter 5 which is devoted to the analysis of beam-columns in com-
bined loading. A framework for the evaluation of the load-displacement response, suitable
1.5. Organization of the Thesis 5
for implementation in a computer code, is developed. Thus, the total model has upon the
conclusion of this chapter been derived.
The established procedure is then veried in Chapter 6 against available third party results
in the form of experimental data from Nishihara [31] and theoretical results from Melchior
Hansen [17]. Chapter 7 concludes the documentation by presenting the results obtained
when the procedure is applied to a typical double hull, ultra large crude carrier (ULCC)
structure.
Finally, conclusions from the present study and recommendations for future work are oered
in Chapter 8.
To further facilitate the reading of this thesis, a selected few topics are presented in appen-
dices. Of these, Appendix A which explains the derivation of the forced curvature principle
for a general asymmetrical loaded cross section will be of interest for general reference. The
remaining appendices are intended primarily for readers unfamiliar with the current topic of
ultimate strength, or readers who which to implement their own procedure along the same
lines used in this research.
Towards this end, the solution to the classical beam-column problem, including imperfec-
tion and lateral loading, is given in Appendix B. In Appendix C the numerical solution
scheme to the von Karman equations is outlined in detail and veried against experimental
results. Further, Appendix D presents an alternative method for establishing the idealized
beam-column response, involving the direct evaluation of the full set of ordinary dierential
equations (ODE's) describing the beam behavior.

Chapter 2
Ultimate and Post-Ultimate Capacity
of the Hull Girder
2.1 Introduction
When assessing the ultimate capacity of a cross section made up of numerous individual
structural components in a typically complex way, the need for simplications is evident. Of
course, one could go all the way: Forget about simplication and just apply state-of-the-art
structural analysis tools, e.g. nite elements { Build a highly complex model { Solve it, and
arrive at an answer. But what would be the credibility of that answer?
First of all, the more complex the model gets, the bigger the room for error and hence,
the more dire need for verication. An obvious solution to this would be to test the real
thing. Tab. 2.1, taken from Yao [47], list the tests conducted since the turn of the century.
However, full scale experimental results for modern ships are hard to come by as it would
require vast nancial resources to perform these test, especially when the scope of interest is
on the leviathans of the sea like bulk carriers and very large crude carriers (VLCC's). Thus,
benchmarking against experiments is not an viable option. Realizing this enforces the notion
of need for simplication. Abandoning experiments leads to a simplied model as the only
possible cause for verication of the answer obtained from the complex model.
Another aspect is the resources required to perform an analysis. A highly complex nite
element analysis will allocate huge resources both in man hours going into creating the model
and in computer resources for solving of the model. In an academic/research environment
this may be acceptable but for application in e.g. design and emergency response, fast
calculation of the ultimate capacity is of utmost importance.
Altogether, this lead to the inevitable conclusion that if evaluation of the ultimate capacity
of a vessel is to enter the practical design and operation of any ship, the procedure must
7
8 Chapter 2. Ultimate and Post-Ultimate Capacity of the Hull Girder
Table 2.1: Characteristics of full scale tested ships (Adopted from Yao [47]).
Name of vessel Type Length Breadth Depth Disp. Year Test
(m) (m) (m) (Tonf) tested group
Wolf Destroyer 68.10 6.25 4.11 381 1902 Adm.
Preston Destroyer 95.81 9.44 6.30 1,190 1930 BCR
Bruce Destroyer 95.81 9.44 6.30 1,190 1931 BCR
Frank Purnell Ore/Bulk 181.36 18.29 10.67 20,960 1943 USMC
Cadillac Ore/Bulk 181.36 18.29 10.67 20,960 1943 USMC
John Hutchinson Ore/Bulk 184.22 18.29 10.67 21,058 1943 USMC
Champlain Ore/Bulk 184.22 18.29 10.67 21,058 1943 USMC
Shilon Tanker 159.56 20.73 11.96 21,880 1943 USMC
Philip Schuyler Cargo 131.52 17.34 11.38 14,230 1944 USMC
Neverita Tanker 147.95 17.98 10.36 16,793 1944 ASWC
Antelope Tanker 159.56 20.73 11.96 21,888 1944 OSRD
Elk Hills Tanker 159.56 20.73 11.96 21,888 1944 OSRD
Ventura Hills Tanker 159.52 20.73 11.96 21,888 1945 USMC
Newcombia Tanker 147.95 17.98 10.36 16,790 1945 OSRD
Fullerton Hills Tanker 159.56 20.73 11.96 21,888 1945 OSRD
Fort Miin Tanker 159.56 20.73 11.96 21,888 1945 USMC
Clan Alpine Cargo 134.57 17.34 11.38 13,764 1947 ASWC
President Wilson Passenger 185.60 23.01 18.76 23,500 1947 USMC
Ocean Vulcan Cargo 134.57 17.34 11.38 13,752 1947/48 ASWC
Albuera Destroyer 115.52 12.27 6.71 2,315 1949/50 NCRE
Abbreviations: Adm. : Admiralty
BCR : Bureau of Construction and Repair
USMC : United States Maritime Commission
ASWC : Admiralty Ship Welding Committee
OSRD : Oce of Scientic Research and Development
NCRE : Naval Construction Research Establishment
be rapid. This will require simplications to be made. Hence, it is necessary to gain an
understanding of the inner working of the ship structure from which possible simplication
schemes can be established and evaluated.
2.2 Longitudinal Strength

A ship's hull is basically a box girder structure composed of stiened plating. The global
forces acting on it arises from the distributed hull weight, cargo weight, buoyancy, and wave
environment. Together, these forces will create the traditional sectional loading consisting
2.2. Longitudinal Strength 9
of moment, shear, and torque all resulting in stresses and strains in the structure. Any
ocean going vessel will experience these loadings. However, for an intact vessel the bending
moment about the horizontal neutral axis will normally be the predominant sectional force.
Because of the very high stress levels this moment may create in the deck and bottom of the
structure, these regions may suer failure due to buckling or plastic collapse. Consequently,
the structural response to this load component has received enough attention during time
to get its own name { Longitudinal strength { by which is understood the ship's strength
against the horizontal bending moment.
As already mentioned, the ship hull is basically a box girder, and this was indeed used in the
rst approach to calculate the longitudinal strength. What was done was simply to apply
standard beam theory to the hull girder and then calculate the shear force and bending
moment assuming a distribution of weight and a calculated buoyancy distribution along the
hull based on some assumed wave model. One of the rst to do this on steel vessels was
William John [22] who in 1874 proposed that the maximum bending moment at midships
approximately could be expressed as
Mmax = rL (2.1)
where r is the displacement, L is the length, and is the fraction of the length that
approximately represent the leverage of the moment. He established the relation based on
the observation that the maximum moment occurred for a wave of length equal to the length
of the vessel. was then taken in the region of thirty-ve through fty depending on the
loading condition of the vessel. When the moment was known from Eq. (2.1), applying
Navier's equation for beam cross section, he determined the maximum stress as
max = zMImax (2.2)

where I is the moment of inertia of the midship section and z is the distance from the elastic
neutral axis to the stringer deck1 . Based on this, John discussed the possibility of tension
failure of the deck in the hogging condition.
In retrospect, with the benet of hindsight, it may seem negligent to discard the problem
of compressive buckling as a failure mode. However, in those days naval architects collec-
tively thought the main criterion to be failure/breaking of plating and rivets in the tension
side of bending. It was not until the loss of the torpedo-boat/destroyer HMS Cobra on
September 18th 1901, that the compressive buckling was moved up on the list of failure
modes (cf. Faulkner et al. [14]). Nevertheless, John's suggested method still covers almost
all important items for the longitudinal strength assessment.
After John, many improvements has been achieved. Both on the method of wave load
calculation and on the method of stress analysis, as well as on failure criterions where fatigue,
yielding, buckling now all come into play. Still, John's fundamental idea remains unchanged.
1In ships of those days there was no point in including the distance z as the maximum distance from the
neutral axis to either deck or bottom { It was always maximum to the deck.
2.3 Ultimate Longitudinal Strength
As already stated, the loss of the Cobra in 1901 lead to the recognition of the key in uence
of compressive buckling collapse. One of the ndings of the investigation committee was,
that the measured de ection of Cobra's sister ship, Wolf, during a static bending test was
larger than those calculated by application of beam theory. This lead to the introduction of
the eective width concept where the eectiveness of some members is considered reduced by
the occurrence of buckling in compression. This nding was further substantiated in Vasta's
1958 paper [46], where he summarizes on the lessons learned from full scale test. Specically,
the tests of the two destroyers Preston and Bruce showed that the cross section attained its
ultimate strength when the deck and/or bottom undergoes buckling/plastic collapse while
exposed to compressive longitudinal bending. Further, Vasta found that the stress at the
buckled plates calculated using = zM=I (i.e. simple beam theory as in Eq. (2.2)) with M
equal to the collapse bending moment, had good correlation with the experimental ndings
for isolated plates.
In essence, this discovery lead to the very important realization that the structural behavior
of each individual member of the cross section must be considered separately. One cannot
just look at the whole section as one. One of the rst to use this observation was Caldwell
[5] who in 1965 suggested a new method of calculating the ultimate longitudinal strength
of a midship section. In his method the individual structural members are lumped together
into panels. The assumption is, that the collapse load for each of these panels is known
beforehand, either by experiments or calculation. Thus, with this assumption fullled, the
ultimate longitudinal strength { or collapse moment { can be estimated by simple summation.
2.4 Ultimate and Post-Ultimate Strength

The method proposed by Caldwell fail, however, to account for the post-collapse strength of
the individual structural members in the cross section. This shortcoming was later addressed
by Smith [44]. He proposed an approach where each stiened panel is considered to be a
number of beam-columns, each comprised of one stiener and a certain width of the plate
it is attached to. Then, by dividing the cross section of the beam-column into a number of
horizontal bers and by straining (loading) the structure incrementally, the method allows
for the elastic-plastic behavior of the stiener and for the buckling of the plate. For each
increment in the straining, the corresponding stress increment in each ber is derived using
the tangent modulus of elasticity. That is, for the stiener the slope of the stress-strain curve
at the current level of straining is used, and for the plate the slope of the average stress-strain
curve. It should also be noted that the occurrence of brittle fracture is not included in the
discussion. That is, it is assumed that the material has sucient ductility to eliminate the
possibility of brittle fracture.
The work of Smith has been used by several other researchers in this eld with some dif-
ferences and improvements added on. The main dierence in these improved methods, is
2.5. Pre-Selection of Method 11
the way the average stress-strain relations for the beam-columns are formulated. Rutherford
and Caldwell [42] did a very thorough analysis of the VLCC Energy Concentration which
collapsed during discharge in Rotterdam on July 21st 1980. Their work focuses on the sen-
sitivity of the ultimate capacity caused by material properties, corrosion, lateral pressure,
methods of manufacture, and modeling uncertainties. Yao and Nikolov [48] used the same
concept as Smith to formulate a method that includes residual stresses in the plating and
initial de ection of both plate and stiener. They later improved the formulation (Yao and
Nikolov [49]) by further including the coupled exural behavior of the stiener which en-
abled their method to account for the possible tripping failure of the stiener. In the last
study they further investigated the eect of the torsional stiness of the stieners on the
ultimate capacity. The nding was, as expected, that the inclusion of the tripping mode for
the stiener caused a reduction in the ultimate capacity.
All these methods have common heritage with Smith's method, and can collectively be
described as beam-column methods. In contrast to these, a dierent approach would be
to apply the nite element method (FEM). In 1983 Chen et al. [6] described a method for
the analysis of the ultimate strength based on the nite element method. The method is
excellent in the way that it accounts for all major eects i.e. elasto-plastic properties of
the material, geometrically nonlinear behavior of the elements, and their buckling and post-
buckling strength. However, the drawback of the method is, that the solution procedure is
extremely time consuming. This problem was addressed by Ueda and Rashed [45] in 1984,
by the introduction of the Idealized Structural Unit Method (ISUM). This method adopts
the nite element terminology relating to nodal forces and displacements, but diers from
the standard nite element method approach suggested by Chen in the formulation and size
of the used elements. In the idealized structural unit method approach, the conventional
elements used in the nite element method are replaced with the Idealized Structural Units
(ISU). These are large elements capable of describing the structural behavior of an entire
member of the structure. Thus, by application of the idealized structural unit method, the
number of degrees of freedom is considerably reduced and a large reduction in computer
time for the solve is thereby achieved. The idealized structural unit method approach holds
a lot of promise and is still under continuous development by researchers such as Paik et
al. [34] and Bai et al. [1], to cover structural members like both stiened and unstiened
plate elements, and specialized beam-column elements.
2.5 Pre-Selection of Method

As re ected in the previous section, it becomes evident by studying the literature and publica-
tion on the topic of ultimate and post-ultimate capacity of ship hulls, that state-of-the-art at
present either relies on a beam-column approach, or on the idealized structural unit method.
It may, however, be argued that the nite element method also constitutes state-of-the-art
as it assures inclusion of all major eects in a consistent rational way. Nevertheless, due the
(at the moment) very high consumption of computing time associated with the nite element
Figure 2.1: Calculated and measured moment-curvature relations for the 1/3-scale
frigate. (Adopted from ISSC'94, Technical Committee III.1 [11]).
method, it must be discarded as a candidate for the project at hand, where rapid calculations
is of the utmost importance. Hence, the choice is limited to either the beam-column method
or idealized structural unit method.
In the author's opinion, this choice is rst of all a matter of taste. Both methods rely on some
analytical solution to whatever is considered a structural member, whether it is a solution to
the beam-column or a set of advanced elements describing also a beam-column or perhaps a
stiened panel, and both method has their advantages and drawbacks. For some purposes
one may be preferable to the other, and vice versa. Nevertheless, it is essentially a choice
between a model formulated in framework of either beam theory, or nite elements.
This conclusion is substantiated by the benchmark investigation of dierent computer codes
for the evaluation of the ultimate and post-ultimate capacity of ship hulls performed by the
Technical Committee III.1 of ISSC'94 [11]. The benchmarking was based on the experimen-
tal test of a 1/3-scale model of a steel frigate representing a typical warship hull structure
2.5. Pre-Selection of Method 13
subjected to bending loads (cf. Dow [8]). The ISSC contributers each performed a calculation
of the ultimate and post-ultimate capacity based on their individual selection of method and
the obtained results were compared in the committee report with the experimental ndings
of Dow (see Fig. 2.1). Thus, all three of the above mentioned methods (i.e. FEM, ISUM,
and beam-column) where represented in the comparison.
Studying the comparison of the moment-curvature relations shown in Fig. 2.1, two apparent
observations can be made. Firstly, it is evident that there is a pronounced discrepancy be-
tween the dierent solutions. Secondly, the best result appears to be the idealized structural
unit method based solution presented as number eight. However, considering the various
dierences in how the boundary conditions, residual stresses, initial de ections, etc. were
applied in the dierent solutions, defuses a conclusion, as also pointed out in [11], and al-
though the idealized structural unit method yields a very potent solution, beam-column
approaches such as number three, seven, and nine also qualies as good approximations to
the experimental result.
Also interesting in this respect are the ndings of the Technical Committee V.1 of ISSC'94
[13] on the ultimate strength on ten dierent stiened panels. Here, a benchmark test
focusing on mainly model uncertainties and human error was conducted. The methods used
were all beam-column approaches, and it it was found that on e.g. the eective width used,
a variation in the range of zero to fteen percent arose with one odd forty-ve percent
lower value reported. The study was later extensively reported by Rigo et al. [41] with a
number of elaborations, e.g. a comparison with experimental data. The conclusion remains
the same though: The prediction of the ultimate strength is very sensitive to the modeling
uncertainties and the possibility of human error.
Hence, it seems that the accurate modeling of the boundary and initial conditions is more
signicant than the choice of method { leading back to the previously stated opinion, namely
that it is a matter of personal preference. But, there is one last objective measure to base
a choice on { speed. Even though the idealized structural unit method is much faster than
the standard nite element method, the beam-column method will still, in general, be the
fastest of the three, and is therefore the strongest candidate for the method to base the
present research on. Especially if the software is to be used in reliability analyzes or as a
part of an emergency response system.

Chapter 3
Ultimate and Post-Ultimate Capacity
of a Laser Welded Panel
3.1 Introduction
The previous chapter presented a study of literature for the available methods to evaluate of
the ultimate and post-ultimate strength of the hull girder. Three possible candidates were
found, namely
Finite Elements Method (FEM)
Idealized Structural Unit Method (ISUM)
Beam-column Method
Further, a qualitative comparison of the three methods [11] was reviewed, and based on
this a pre-selection of the beam-column method was made. Still, before making the nal
selection, it would be preferable to gain more insight into the performance of especially the
beam-column approach. Towards this end, it is of interest to investigate the behavior of
stiened panels as predicted by the three methods.
Such investigations have been performed by the Technical Committee III.1 of ISSC'97 [12] to
which the author has contributed. Here, the ultimate and post-ultimate capacity of both a
laser welded panel and a glass-ber reinforced plastic (GRP) panel was investigated, and the
numerical predictions was compared with the experimental results. Hence, the investigation
may be seen as a continuation of the work reported in [13, 41].
In the following, the scope will be limited to the laser welded panel, as this specimen repre-
sents the most common design in shipbuilding. The laser welded panel is described in detail
by Dow [9]. However, to facilitate the reading a short description is presented.
15
16 Chapter 3. Ultimate and Post-Ultimate Capacity of a Laser Welded Panel
Table 3.1: Measured welding residual stresses (MPa).

Panel A B C D E F
Longitudinal -73 -50 -65 -22 -49 -58
Transverse -79 -34 -70 -35 -59 -51
Longitudinal S1 S2 S3 S4 S5 S6 S7 S8
Web -43 30 21 32 -115 8 12 -47
Flange -50 -47 -73 lost -191 42 20 -48
3.2 Denition of Laser Welded Panel

The geometry of the panel is shown in Fig. 3.1. It is a laser welded, orthogonally stiened
grillage approximately 3300 mm in total length by 1250 mm in total width. Transverse
T stieners of 46 127 mm dimensions (labeled T1 through T3) divide the length of the
panel equally into bays of 1000 mm of which the two center bays are complete, with the
end bays only being approximately half lengths of 650 mm. Four longitudinal T stiener of
25 75 mm dimensions (labeled S1 through S8) divide the width in ve sections of which
the three central sections are of 300 mm width, with the two outside sections being only
175 mm wide. Thus, this arrangement provides six complete panels of 1000 300 mm and
6 mm thickness (labeled A through F), plus fourteen half panels surrounding these to provide
boundary conditions.
Further, extensive information on material properties, initial geometric imperfection, and
residual stresses was reported by Dow, and are summarized in the following.
The material is steel with a modulus of elasticity E = 207 GPa. For the plates the 0.2%
tensile stress was between 437 and 447 MPa, whereas the yield stress for the stieners was
either 350 or 359 MPa, according to measurements. Based on these, the average yield stresses
were selected as y,p = 440 MPa and y,s = 359 MPa for the plate and stiener respectively.
The shape of the initial geometrical imperfections is shown in Fig. 3.2. The imperfections are
based on values measured in steps of 50 mm and 200 mm in the transverse and longitudinal
directions respectively, taken from the specimen description [9]. In the plot the displacements
have been magnied by a factor of approximately twenty-ve to make the de ection pattern
more pronounced. From the plot, it is evident that there exists a large overall imperfection
of the panel, superimposed with smaller inter-frame imperfection patterns.
The welding residual stresses was established based on measured strains. Thus, the residual
stress presented in Tab. 3.1 are actually calculated values derived from the measured strains.
By observing the values, it seen that a large variation of the residual stress exist throughout
the grillage.
3.2. Denition of Laser Welded Panel 17
Figure 3.1: Geometry of laser welded panel. All dimensions shown are in mm.
Figure 3.2: Initial geometric imperfections of laser welded panel, Magnication factor 25.
In the experiments, the grillage was clamped at both ends and at the transverse frame
locations along each side. However, with respect to the transverse frames, translation in the
longitudinal direction was allowed due to the bolted end plates and the guide system used.
The grillage was exposed to an in-plane load, applied in the longitudinal direction and great
care was taken in the experiment to avoid any moment resultant of the load.
Hence, in the calculations, a pure axial load can be assumed. Further, as a result of the the
doubler plates at the bays closest to the longitudinal ends of the panel, the ultimate strength
of the grillage is expected to be governed by the behavior of the six plate elds A-F with the
attached stieners S1-S8.
3.3 Summary of Performed Calculations and Methods

Calculations has been performed by the following people:
R. Damonte, Cetena, Italy
J.M. Gordo, Instituto Superior Tecnico, Portugal
T. Hu and N.G. Pegg, Defense Research Establishment Atlantic, UK
T. Yao, Hiroshima University, Japan
U. Rohr and B. Jackstell, Universitat Rostock, Germany
S.-R. Cho, University of Ulsan, Korea
M.L. Kaminski, Nevesbu, Holland
R.S. Dow, DRA Dunfermline, UK
L.P. Nielsen and J. Juncher Jensen, Technical University of Denmark.
In the following a short description of each calculation is presented. The description is based
on the documentation received from the individual participants in the ISSC'97 committee
investigation. This material is more or less extensive which also is re ected in the following.
The focus of the description is on the method used. Further, a graphical presentation of the
obtained load-displacement curve(s) is presented. Finally, each calculation has been assigned
a reference number for use in the overall comparison of the results given in Fig. 3.3.
To facilitate this comparison between the dierent results the average longitudinal stress
and strain " have been non-dimensionalized by the average yield stress y and yield strain
"y respectively. These are found as
y = ApAy,p ++ 44AAsy,s = 423:9 MPa and "y = Ey = 2048

p s
where the cross sectional areas for the plate Ap and the longitudinal stieners As are given
in Fig. 3.1 and an average yield stresses y,p = 440 MPa and y,s = 359 MPa for the plate
and stiener respectively is used.
3.3. Summary of Performed Calculations and Methods 19
Damonte: (#1, 2)
FEM analyzes using MARC, release K6.2,
utilizing both an updated Lagrangian full
Newton-Raphson, and an automatic load in-
crementation procedure to solve the material
and geometric nonlinear response.
The grillage within the two transverse frames
T1 and T3 was modeled using a four-node,
thick shell element utilizing bilinear interpo-
lation of coordinates, displacements and ro-
tations, and with three global displacements
and three global rotations as degrees of freedom at each node. In total the nite
element model consisted of 1644 elements, 1682 nodal points, and 10092 active degrees
of freedom. Clamped boundary condition of the transverse frame T1 and T3 was
assumed. The middle transverse frames T2 was supported for vertical de ection, but
allowed to rotate. Further, a rigid I bar, positioned at the neutral axis of the section,
was used to transfer the in-plane load to one edge of the model. The geometrical
imperfections were approximated by a sinusoidal shape with the same maximum value
as measured in the experiment.
Finally, the residual stresses were applied to the model in two dierent ways. In
the rst (#1), the measured values from Tab. 3.1 was included directly as initial
stresses. However, as these stresses are not self-equilibrating another calculation (#2)
was carried out using a temperature distribution to create a self-equilibrating initial
stress pattern closely matching the measured stresses.
Gordo: (#3, 4)
FEM analysis using PANFEM, version 2.
PANFEM is a university developed nonlin-
ear nite element code for at plates and at
stiened panels with initial imperfection ex-
posed to lateral and/or in-plane loads (see
e.g. Kmiecik [24]).
The span of a single longitudinal stiener
with attached plating supported at the mid-
dle by a transverse frame was modeled (#3).
Thus, the model was two times the frame
spacing in length and one longitudinal stiener spacing in width. Symmetry conditions
were assumed at the top and edges of the model. The geometrical imperfections were
modeled by a stiener out-of-plane imperfection of 1 mm and a plate imperfection of
2 mm. The residual stresses were not included in the model.
In addition a simplied beam-column approach by Gordo and Guedes Soares [16]
including residual stresses (#4), was also used.
Hu and Pegg: (#5)
FEM analysis using ADINA and automatic
load-displacement control to solve the geo-
metric and material nonlinearities.
The grillage within the transverse frames
T1 and T3 was modeled using a four-node,
quadrilateral, isoparametric shell element
with a 2 2 2 integration order. The kine-
matic assumption was large displacement
and rotation, but small strain. The material
was assumed to be bilinear elastic-perfectly-
plastic with a von Mises yield condition. Simply supported boundary conditions
were assumed at frame T1 and T3. Also, the ends of these stieners, along with the
center T2 stiener, were allowed to rotate in the longitudinal plane. The geometrical
imperfections were approximated by half sine curves between the transverse stieners
with an amplitude of 5 mm. The residual stresses were not included in the model.
Yao: (#6)
FEM analysis using ULSAS, including both
material and geometrical nonlinearities.
Half the panel was modeled using a four-node
shell element for the plating and the webs of
the longitudinals and beam-column elements
for the anges of the longitudinal stieners
and for the entire transverse frames. In to-
tal the nite element model had 1836 nodal
points for shell elements and 180 nodal points
for the beam-column elements. The material
was model by plastic ow theory considering the von Mises yield function as a plas-
tic potential. Further, the material was assumed to follow the combined hardening
law, although elastic-perfectly-plastic material was assumed in the analysis. Lateral
de ections along the loading edges and the end points of the transverse frames were
constrained, and symmetry conditions were applied along the longitudinal center line.
The geometrical imperfections were approximated by
X
11
w = A0 sin x +
` m=1 A m sin
mx sin y
` b
where ` = 2000 mm, b = 300 mm, and A0 = 0:1, A1 = 1:1165, A2 = 0:2233,
A3 = 0:3304, A4 = 0:061, A5 = 0:1541, A6 = 0:0308, A7 = 0:0725, A8 = 0:0145,
A9 = 0:0826, A10 = 0:0057 and A11 = 0:0303 in mm. Finally, the residual welding
stresses were included by increasing the compressive inherent strain incrementally in
the measured heat aected zone in the plates and stiener webs until these zones
reached yield in tension.
Rohr and Jackstell: (#7)
FEM analysis using MARC, release K6.1,
utilizing an updated Lagrangian approach
where the Lagrangian frame of reference is
redened at the beginning of each load in-
crement.
The complete grillage was modeled using a
four-node, isoparametric, bilinear shell ele-
ment. In total the nite element model con-
sisted of 3660 elements, 3705 nodal points,
and 18346 active degrees of freedom. Lateral
de ections along the loading edges and the end points of the transverse frames were
constrained together with rotations of the end points of the transverse frames. The
material was assumed to follow the isotropic hardening law and the von Mises yield
criteria. The geometrical imperfections were modeled as forced displacements in each
nodal point using interpolation in the measured imperfection pattern. Finally, the
residual stresses were applied as a set of self-equilibrating stresses, constant through
the thickness and over the panel.
Cho: (#8)
FEM analysis using NISA.
The whole grillage was modeled in the com-
putation. However, to mimic the eects of
doubler plates at end bays, the rst 600 mm
from the edge and inward of both end bays
were assumed to be rigid. Therefore, only a
total length of 2200 mm of the grillage was
assumed to be deformable. This part in-
cludes two middle bays within the transverse
frames T1 and T3. The full width of the gril-
lage was included in the model. The four-node, Mindlin-Reissner plate element was
adopted for the deformable part of the model. The structure was modeled with a total
of 1681 nodal points and 1640 elements. To include the initial geometric imperfections,
care was taken while meshing the model, such that nodes which coincide with the
locations where the initial shape imperfections were measured were generated in the
process. The initial geometric imperfections where then introduced to the model as
the initial vertical coordinates of the corresponding nodes. The residual stresses were
considered in the calculations by introducing the eective yield stress for each element.
That is, if the residual stress at a specic location was e.g. compressive, then the yield
stress for the the specic element at that location was reduced by the amount of the
residual stress.
Kaminski: (#9, 10, 11)
Three dierent FEM models have been used.
The code CSA/GENSA, a companion to
CSA/NASTRAN, was applied in two dier-
ent modes: Explicit (#9) and implicit (#10).
The former is a time integration procedure,
which can cope with hugely dynamic prob-
lems and the latter is the usual, nonlinear,
quasi-static analysis. The complete grillage
was modeled by 950 elements yielding 5400
degrees of freedom. The loaded edges were
restrained from rotation and lateral translations, and further specied to remain
straight during the loading. The geometrical imperfections were divided into global
and inter-frame imperfections, both of which with an assumed sinusoidal shape and
with amplitude of 5 mm and 1 mm, respectively. Finally, utilizing that the pre-stress
load f 0 and thermal load f T in the FEM formulation are introduced as
Z Z
f 0 = BT 0 dV and f T = BT ET dV
respectively (B is the strain-nodal displacement matrix), the welding residual stresses
were included through a self-equilibrating thermal loads given through 0 = ET .
The third analysis (#11) was done in ANSYS release 5.0, using a plastic, quadruple
shell element with six degrees of freedom at each node. The modeling of boundary
conditions, geometrical imperfections, and residual stresses was essentially the same
as used in the GENSA analyzes. The complete model has 2270 elements, 2011 nodal
points, and 11576 degrees of freedom.
Dow: (#12, 13)
A beam-column approach (#12) (Dow et
al. [10]) was used before performing the ac-
tual experiments using average imperfection
levels not based on the measured imperfec-
tions. Later, a detailed FEM analysis (#13)
was made using the code ASAS-NL. The full
grillage was modeled using a eight-node, de-
generate, isoparametric shell elements with a
2 2 Gauss integration order in the plane of
the shell and a ve-point Newton Coates
integration through the thickness. Plating, longitudinal girders, and transverse frames
were all modeled using shell elements. The nite element model consisted of 920
elements, 2905 nodal points, and 17430 degrees of freedom. Material properties,
boundary conditions and both inter-frame and overall components of the initial, as
measured, distortions were modeled accurately. Finally, the welding induced residual
stresses were included as a self equilibrating set of initial stresses.
Nielsen and Juncher Jensen: (#14, 15)
FEM analysis using ANSYS release 5.3, uni-
versity edition, utilizing the full Newton-
Raphson equilibrium iteration scheme and
bisection to solve the geometric and material
nonlinearities (#14).
The complete grillage was modeled using a
four-node, bilinear, isoparametric, thin to
moderately thick shell element with six de-
grees of freedom at each node. The element
incorporates von Mises isotropic hardening
plasticity and has full through-the-thickness integration. In total the nite element
model consisted of 8400 elements and 8537 nodes with an estimated 50088 active
degrees of freedom. The three transverse frames T1, T2, and T3 were clamped at
the boundaries except for free motion in the loading direction. The doubler plates
were assumed rigid and thus replaced with clamped boundary conditions yielding a
total length equal to 2700 mm of the model. Initial geometrical imperfections were
included at each nodal point using interpolation in the measured imperfection pattern,
but residual stresses were neglected.
Later, also a beam-column approach (#15) was applied to one longitudinal stiener in
between two transverse frames, thus having a total length of 1000 mm. The boundary
conditions were assumed to be clamped at both ends and symmetry at the plate edges.
The residual stresses were ignored and the geometrical imperfections where modeled
by a prescribed end-rotation.
To summarize, a total of fteen distinct calculation have been performed on the laser welded
panel by nine contributors. Of these, most are nonlinear nite element method calculations,
but also beam-column approaches and to some extent idealized structural unit method cal-
culations have been submitted. In numbers, this totals to
Method Total Calculation reference number(s)

Finite element 11 1, 2, 3, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 13, 14
Idealized structural unit (1) 6
Beam-column 3 4, 12, 15
Whether calculation number six actually can be characterized as being based on the idealized
structural unit method is somewhat debatable. The fact that it uses special beam-column
elements to model the stieners in combination with standard shell elements for the plating
of the grillage, denitely distinguish it from the other traditional nite element models
presented. In the author's opinion, this feature makes it an idealized structural unit method
based solution, but it is recognized that this conclusion may be contested. Nevertheless, for
comparative purposes this will be the interpretation in the following sections.
3.4 Basis for Comparison of Results
Obviously, for design purposes of a single stiened panel, the ability to accurately predict
the ultimate load level of the panel is very interesting, whereas the post-ultimate behavior
is of less importance when only one panel is considered. However, when the panel becomes
part of a larger structure, the post-ultimate behavior becomes equally as important as the
ultimate load level.
In a large structure it must be expected that some members will exceed their ultimate
capacity before the entire structure reaches the ultimate load level. Hence, when evaluating
the ultimate capacity of the entire structure, these members will contribute with their post-
ultimate response. Consequently, to accurately predict the ultimate strength of e.g. a hull
girder made up of numerous such stiened panels, it is equally important to know both the
ultimate and post-ultimate strength of each panel.
Therefore, in the following discussion of the presented results, the focus will be on these two
key features of the solutions, i.e. the ability to match the experimental ultimate load level,
and predict of the collapse behavior. The collapse behavior of the laser welded panel can be
summarized in four tempi:
1. At a relative low load level (=y 0:25) yielding initiates in the longitudinals. This
behavior is caused by a combination of two factors: One, the yield stress for the
longitudinals is lower than for the plate and two, the shape of the initial imperfection
pattern.
2. Upon continued up-loading, buckling rst occurs in the plate elds with unsupported
boundaries. Then, at a higher load level, buckling of the interior plate elds A-F takes
place.
3. At the ultimate load carrying capacity, signicant plastic deformations have taken
place in both the plates and the longitudinals. Up to this point the behavior is mainly
governed by inter-frame buckling, but in the post-ultimate region overall buckling
becomes the dominant failure mechanism with a signicant torsion of the stiener T2.
4. Just after the ultimate load, a rapid decrease in stiness appears caused by the tipping
failure of the longitudinals. Thereafter, a slower rate of decrease in stiness is observed,
mainly related to an increased yielding in the panel.
Regarding the ultimate capacity of the panel, the experiments yielded a collapse load equal
to sixty percent of the squash load Py (average yield stress). This information together with
the described collapse behavior constitutes the basis for the following discussion. It should,
however, be mentioned that the input data, as given in Fig. 3.1 and Tab. 3.1, may not
necessary re ect all pertinent data for the panel tested which may cause some methods to
been judged too harshly in the comparison.
3.5. Discussion of the Results 25
Figure 3.3: Calculated and measured non-dimensionalized, axial stress-strain

relationships for the laser welded panel.
3.5 Discussion of the Results
In Fig. 3.3 the calculated load-displacement curves for all fteen solutions is presented to-
gether with the experimental result. Further, Tab. 3.2 lists the ultimate capacity c predicted
by the same fteen calculations. Also listed in the table is the relative deviation from the
experimental data of both the non-dimensionalized axial stress c =y and strain "c ="y at
collapse.
From the graphs in Fig. 3.3 it is seen that nearly all of the results re ect the prescribed
collapse behavior. Calculation eight stops short after the ultimate load is reached, and thus
cannot describe the post-ultimate behavior. Other calculations, such as two, ve, eleven,
twelve, and fteen displays a less signicant drop in stiness just after the ultimate capacity,
but still captures the overall collapse behavior reasonably well. Also, both calculation two
and eleven seems to allow for a quite signicant straining at the ultimate load level before
any drop in stiness is observed, which is in contrast with the experimental ndings.
Table 3.2: Ultimate capacity predictions.

Calculation Collapse Normalized Relative Beam- Finite Idealized
reference load c stress-strain deviation column element structural
number [MPa] "c="y c =y " method method unit method
Experiment 254 0.65 0.60 0% 0% p
#1 346 0.93 0.82 42% 35%
#2 311 1.18 0.73 81% 23%
p
#3 300 0.87 0.71 33% 18%
p
#4 273 0.96 0.64 47% 8%
p
#5 234 0.71 0.55 9% -8%
p
#6 233 0.71 0.55 8% -8%
p
#7 311 0.76 0.73 17% 23%
p
#8 309 0.82 0.73 26% 22%
p
#9 272 0.69 0.64 6% 7%
p
# 10 256 0.73 0.60 12% 1%
p
# 11 344 0.96 0.81 46% 35%
p
# 12 259 0.77 0.61 18% 2%
p
# 13 240 0.68 0.57 5% -5%
p
# 14 278 0.72 0.66 11% 9%
p
# 15 250 0.85 0.59 30% -2%
p
Whereas the load-displacement behavior is predicted well in most of the calculations, the
ultimate load levels obtained dier rather signicantly, being between fty-ve and eighty
percent of the average yield stress (the squash load). This can also be seen from the relative
deviations in the non-dimensionalized stress at collapse as listed in Tab. 3.2, which is
between eight and thirty-ve percent below and above the experimental result respectively.
Most of the nite element method calculations (one, two, three, seven, eight, and eleven)
predict an ultimate load fteen to thirty-ve percent larger than the measured. Only the
nite element method calculations six, nine, ten, thirteen and fourteen yield predictions
within plus or minus ten percent of the measured value (cf. Tab. 3.2). Of these, calculation
number ve allows for rotation of the transverse stieners T1, T2, and T3 and should therefore
be expected to give a low prediction.
These dierences cannot be explained by gross errors in the modeling as all of the calculations
have been immaculately done within the chosen assumptions for each method. However, the
discrepancies may be due to inaccurate modeling of the tripping failure mode in the nite
element models. On the other hand, the three calculations (four, twelve, and fteen) based
on a beam-column approach, are all observed to give very reasonable results within a few
percent of the measured ultimate load. This even though number fteen does not accounts
for the tripping failure mode in its formulation.
3.6. Summary 27
Also, some of the nite element method calculations have been performed both with and
without geometrical imperfections and/or welding residual stresses. In comparison, it seems
that the residual stresses only marginally in uences the load-displacement curve, illustrated
by nite element method calculations three, ve, and fourteen which do not include the
residual stresses, but still predicts both ultimate and post-ultimate behavior just as good as
the other nite element method calculations.
3.6 Summary
Except for solution thirteen by Dow who also performed the experiment on the panel, and
fteen which was added later on, all other calculations were made without prior knowledge
of the experimental result. Thus, it can be assumed that the presented solutions represents
a fair description of the dierent methods accuracy as a design tool, which is perfect for the
task at hand.
To restate the object of this investigation in relation to the current project, the interest is
on selecting a method for rapid and accurate prediction of the ultimate strength of a hull
girder. A pre-selection of the beam-column approach was made in previous chapter, and
the purpose of the present chapter was to seek re-conrmation of this choice. However,
in choosing the beam-column method, the two other possibilities, being the nite element
method and the idealized structural unit method were discarded, both mainly on the ground
of poor performance in speed. It is therefore interesting to see if this conclusion still holds
in light of the new evidence provided by the investigation of the laser welded panel.
3.6.1 The Finite Element Methods

Based on the ndings in this test of the laser welded panel, it can be concluded that it is
within the framework of the nite element method, that the most signicant discrepancies
from the experimental results arises. Most of these calculation predict an ultimate load fteen
to thirty percent larger than what was measured in the experiment. They do, however, all
predict the collapse behavior reasonably well, although there is a tendency for some to miss
the rapid loss of stiness occurring just after collapse. A plausible explanation for this could
be that the eect of tripping failure of the longitudinal stieners is underestimated in those
models, must likely due to modeling of those members.
Thus, it seems that if this method is chosen, great care has to be taken in modeling to account
for tripping failure. This could possibly be done by introducing a ner mesh (i.e. adding
more elements) to describe the longitudinal stieners, as there seem to be a tendency of
higher accuracy of the models with the largest number of elements { or possibly by taking
great care in selecting suitable elements with a preference toward higher order elements
(i.e. using more nodes) to model the stieners.
Figure 3.4: Calculated and measured non-dimensionalized, axial stress-strain

relationships for the laser welded panel.
Beam-column and idealized structural unit methods only.
However, this will inevitable slow down the method even further, as either option will add
more degrees of freedom to solve for, disqualifying it even more for application in the current
study. Thus, with respect to the nite element method the conclusion remains unchanged:
It is not suitable for the current project.
3.6.2 The Beam-Column and Idealized Structural Unit Methods

With respect to the beam-column and idealized structural unit methods, then a plot of
the load-displacement curves for only those methods is presented in Fig. 3.4 to clarify the
conclusions. Even though only four calculations ts in this category, and even worse only
one of those is an idealized structural unit method, they will for lack of other information
be considered representative in the following.
3.6. Summary 29
From the graphs it is observed that all four calculations predicts the ultimate capacity of
the panel very well, as the discrepancies is for all of the calculation less than ten percent
of the measured ultimate load. Concerning the path, then the idealized structural unit
method slightly underestimates the ultimate capacity but captures the post-collapse behavior
much better than all of the beam-column solutions. On the other hand, the beam-column
solutions seems to estimate the ultimate loading capacity of the panel better, but have a
poor description of the following unloading behavior in the post-collapse region.
The reason for this is most likely to be found in the mechanism used to model the post-
ultimate structural behavior. Calculation four and twelve take tripping failure of the stiener
into account, whereas calculation fteen rely on a simple plastic hinge mechanism with no
inclusion of possible tripping, i.e. the cross section remains in its initial prismatic form.
Obviously, this makes a fundamental dierence which also is clearly visible in the plot in
Fig. 3.4 where calculations four and twelve shows a much more rapid loss of stiness in
the post-collapse region of the load-displacement response than is predicted by calculation
fteen.
Why four and twelve still do not come as close the the experiments as six does, even though
they include tripping may be caused by inherent assumptions in the beam-column approach
where the overall de ection pattern of the stiened plate eld is neglected. That is, the beam-
column calculations only model one stiener in between two transverse stieners, i.e. one
bay is modeled only, whereas the idealized structural unit method models the entire grillage.
Still, the overall performance of both the idealized structural unit method and the beam-
column approach appears quite comparable.
In conclusion therefore, there do not seem to be any signicant reason, based on the two
criterions of ability to predict collapse load and post-collapse behavior, that really distinguish
one method form the other. Selecting between the two dierent methods is therefore hard
to do even with the extra evidence from the laser welded panel test. It still falls back to the
question of speed.
Regarding the speed of the remaining two dierent methods, it is the author's opinion, that
the beam-column can be made { and in general will be { much faster than the idealized
structural unit method. This mainly due to the very simple way in which the global system
analysis of e.g. an entire hull cross section, can be made based on the beam-column approach.
Therefore, having exhausted the available information on which to make a choice of method,
it is the nal subjective conclusion to base the current project on a beam-column approach.

Chapter 4
The Beam-Column Method
4.1 Introduction
Based on the previously reviewed comparative studies of the three dierent methods for
the evaluation of the ultimate capacity of the hull girder, the beam-column approach was
selected. The aim is then to make these beam-columns mimic the behavior of the real struc-
ture as closely as possible. However, to apply the beam-column method, a few assumptions
must be made.
First of all, it is assumed that collapse occurs locally between two adjacent frames. Other-
wise, the beam-columns would not behave like columns, since there would be what could
be considered as supports along the length of the beam-column at each intermediate frame
position. It is therefore a necessary assumption. The implications of this assumption is that
the overall deformation of the hull girder is neglected. For most ship structures this is an
excellent simplication, as failure of the midship section is the predominant event { obviously
due to the occurrence of the maximum bending moment at this location. In the case of a
damaged vessel, it may be some other location along the hull girder that will be the weakest
due to e.g. extensive fracture damage from a collision and/or grounding. Nevertheless, the
assumption of failure in between two adjacent frames will still be an acceptable simplication
to most real scenarios.
The method of overall system analysis is then to divide the total hull cross section into
a number of beam-columns each consisting of a stiener and a part of the hull plating as
illustrated in Fig. 4.1. This approach leads to the second assumption: Each beam-column is
assumed to react independently of the adjacent beam-columns.
The downside to this assumption is that the overall structural behavior of e.g. a large stiened
panel between two stringers or girders, will be neglected. That is, by subdividing this
ctitious panel into a number of beam-columns, all reacting independently of each other,
31
32 Chapter 4. The Beam-Column Method
Figure 4.1: Denition sketch for the beam-column approach.
e.g. the overall buckling collapse of the panel will be missed by the method. On the other
hand, the gain of the assumption is that the structural behavior of the beam-column becomes
only a function of how the ends of the beam-column are displaced and/or rotated.
The benet of this fact is quite immense when the system analysis of the entire cross section
is to be performed. A tremendous gain in speed is achieved and the iteration for the ultimate
capacity can be performed simply and very rapidly. As overall performance of the procedure
is one of the key concerns of the project, the benets of this assumption are too good to
miss. Moreover, from the benchmarks previously reviewed, it does not seem to be the overall
collapse mode of a stiened panel that denes its ultimate capacity. Of course, by neglecting
it even though it apparently wont in uence the prediction of the ultimate capacity, an error
may still be introduced in the post-ultimate response. However, in light of the benets
obtainable, it seems fair to neglect this slight error and proceed with the assumption as part
of the scheme presently being formulated.
Thus, to recap: At this point two fundamental assumptions has been made, namely
1. Collapse occurs locally between two adjacent frames.

2. Each beam-column is assumed to react independently of the adjacent beam-columns.
Based on theses two assumptions the beam-column approach can easily be applied to a hull
cross section, given that the load-displacement response of any beam-column is known as
a function of how its ends are displaced and/or rotated, and of course its geometric and
material properties as well as the initial state of the members making up the beam-column.
4.2. Load Description 33
Figure 4.2: Load denition sketch for the midship cross section.
At this point it would be premature to consider how this load-displacement response can be
established. The methods for doing this will be highly dependent on what the actual loading
condition is and how this is selected to be transfered to the individual beam-column. Thus,
at present it will be prudent to press on with a description of the loading.
4.2 Load Description

The object of investigation is a general loading condition consisting of moment, shear, and
torque as show in Fig. 4.2. That is, in the present contents, loading is understood to be the
global sectional forces acting on the cross section being investigated. Further, it is noted that
with the present sign convention shown in Fig. 4.2, the hogging condition will be caused by
positive horizontal moments and thus, the sagging condition by negative horizontal moments.
However, before continuing this discussion of the loading, it is necessary rst to consider
what type of scalable quantities the ultimate capacity are to be expressed in terms of. That
is, which of the ve load components, if not all, are to be varied until the ultimate capacity
is reached?
First of all, it is important to recognize that there are in fact two dierent types of ques-
tions being asked of the procedure depending on the use. When the research objective was
formulated, it was simply stated that a rapid procedure for the evaluation of the ultimate
capacity was to be developed for use in both emergency response eorts, and for input in a
probabilistic reliability analysis of the vessel. At that point, no concern was paid to whether
these two dierent usages would actually be in contradiction or if it posed the exact same
requirements to the procedure. A clarication of this question will therefore be sought in
the following.
Considering rst the probabilistic reliability analysis, then in this framework what is basically
wanted, is a full limit state description of the cross section. Since there are a total of ve
dierent load components, this is actually a limit state surface in a ve-dimensional space.
To establish this would require that the ultimate capacity for each load component alone
was to be established rst, one-by-one. Then, at whatever discreteness level chosen, a full
variation of all ve component within there extremes as determined in the rst step, would
have to be performed. Needless to say, this will be extremely laborious to do and would of
course, require an immense amount of computational work.
On the other hand, if the scope is the emergency response then the situation is totally
dierent. First of all, in this case there will be an actual vessel in an actual condition
which will result in a base set of loads acting on the cross section. In the reliability analysis
framework, this was not interesting as there in essence is no initial load condition in this
framework. What is being done, to put it very simply, is to match a huge number of possible
load conditions with the total limit state surface and then determining whether it is a safe
condition or not. Thus, there is no single set of initial loads where the analysis is started
from. This is however, the exact case in the emergency response scenario. The problem here
is, given this set of initial loads, how much more (hopefully) can the cross section cope with
before the ultimate capacity is reached.
How these initial loads are determined is beyond the scope of the present research. They
are of course induced by the exterior forces acting on the vessel arising from the distributed
hull weight, cargo weight, buoyancy, and wave environment in the case of an intact vessel
a oat. If the scenario involves e.g. grounding and/or collision, then some outer mechanics
and/or dynamics will further add to these loads. Nevertheless, standard textbooks1 on ship
scantling covers this subject very well. Thus, for the present investigation the initial global
sectional loads acting on the hull cross section being investigated, are assumed to be known
quantities.
What is interesting in the emergency response case is, that it will probably be of greater
benet to have a fast method to evaluate the ultimate capacity based on a scaling of some or
all of the initial load components, than a somewhat slower scheme that evaluates the total
limit state surface. The reasoning behind this statement would be, that given a vessel in
an emergency scenario being e.g. a grounding, it may be fair to say that to investigate the
eects of e.g. falling tide given the same sea state, the in uence on the sectional forces would
be comparable with a simple scaling of the initial condition.
Excellent books on this subject are e.g. Terndrup Pedersen and Juncher Jensen [38, 39, 40] (in Danish)
1
or Hughes [20]
4.2.1 Load Interpretation
Entertaining this idea of scaling the initial loading condition makes it interesting if the loads
on the cross section perhaps may be arranged in a way that will allow for a simple scaling
and thus make the computational work easier. Looking at the ve load components it is
observed that they can basically be replaced with two equivalent loads in the form of a
direct and a shear stress distribution. The two bending moments will result in one direct
stress distribution or alternatively one asymmetrical bending moment. Further, the two
shear forces will together result in one shear stress distribution. Regarding the torque, then
this can be split into two parts: The St. Venant and the warping torsional moment. Both of
these two moments will produce shear stresses in the structure (see Fig. 4.3), but only the
warping torsional moment will cause direct stress in the structure. However, for closed-box
cross sections like tankers, the warping part of the total torsional moment is small compared
with the St. Venant part. Thus, the warping torsional moment can reasonably be considered
negligible for those types of structures2 . Hence, only St. Venant torsion will be include in
the present formulation. This then means, that only shear stresses will be produced by the
torque together with the two shear forces.
Drawing on general knowledge of structural analysis of typical ship cross sections, it is known
that regarding the shear stress distribution, by far the major part of these stresses are acting
on the plating of the hull. That is, the shear stresses in the stieners are small compared to
the shear stresses in the plating as illustrated in Fig. 4.3. Hence, a fair assumption would
be that the shear stress in the stieners, as a rst approximation, may be neglected. If it
is further assumed that the shear forces and the torque, all are constant along the part of
the vessel that is to be investigated (i.e. in between two frames), and that the shear stress is
constant between two adjacent stieners, then the shear stress distribution along an isolated
plate is also constant.
Such a situation will be ideal to have when the load-displacement response for a beam-column
is to be established. The implication will be that all the eects of the shear forces and the
torque can be transfered to the plate part of the beam-column only. Thus, if a solution to the
in-plane compressive loading of the plate given a constant shear level can be established, then
the compressive part of the entire beam-column response can be approximated by simple
beam theory. This because the beam-column thus in essence just is a regular beam made
up of two dierent \materials" each having dierent load-displacement behavior.
There are however problems with this assumption. A constant shear stress distribution along
the length of the vessel implies a linear distribution of the bending moment. Nevertheless,
the advantages gained by adopting this assumption are so great that it will be worthwhile
to neglect this variation, and thus take the ultimate bending moment as the mean value of
the bending moment along the particular length of the vessel being investigated.
2It is noted that this assumption is inaccurate in the case of open cross sections like those found in
container vessels, etc. Here the warping torsional moment can be the dominant part of the torque.
Figure 4.3: Shear stress distribution in a typical tanker structure exposed to a unit of:
Vertical and horizontal shear force, and St. Venant and warping torsional
moment.
4.2.2 Load Modeling
Considering the originally stated objective of overall speed of the procedure to be developed,
the ndings in the previous section strongly advocate for the simple approach to the load
modeling. That is, an approach where the ve individual load components are transformed
into a shear stress distribution accounting for the shear forces and the torque, and a single
moment acting about an asymmetrical axis. For a xed level of shear stress this asymmetrical
axis could then be rotated full circle in appropriate steps, yielding the ultimate capacity of
any moment combination at that xed level of shear forces and torque.
However, before committing to this scheme it needs to be considered what eects this ap-
proach will have on the applicability of the procedure in the framework of probabilistic
reliability analysis. Earlier considerations on this topic lead to the conclusion that what was
needed here was really a full limit state surface spanning over all load components. If the
above mentioned scheme of load transformation is adopted, this limit state surface can still
be produced by the procedure, although less gracefully than it otherwise could be done.
Basically, it would entail the establishment of a separate three-dimensional limit state surface
in the three shear stress creating forces, i.e. the horizontal and vertical shear force and
the torsional moment. For any point within the safe domain dened by this limit state
surface, a corresponding constant shear stress distribution will exist which is safe, i.e. the
structure can still withstand more loading which only can be in the form of a combination of
horizontal and vertical bending moments, as these are the only remaining load components.
Thus, at this point the proposed procedure can then be applied to establish exactly how
much more load can be applied until the ultimate capacity is reached for a given number
of possible combinations of the two bending moments. This approach can then be applied
to a given number of the possible safe shear load conditions, and thereby allow for the full,
ve-dimensional limit state surface to be established for the cross section.
On the other hand, if the shear stress response is assumed linear and if the correlation
between moment and shear force is neglected, then the following approach could also be
applied. Given the shear stress distributions Qy , Qz , and Mx for a horizontal shear force,
a vertical shear force, and a torsional moment respectively, all of unit magnitude, then the
principle of superposition could be used to represent any combination of these shear stress
causing loads in the form of the resulting shear stress distribution . Actually, even a linear
elastic, ideal plastic behavior of the the shear stress could easily be incorporated into this
scheme.
This would denitely be the most open way to select for representation of the shear stress
causing loads, as this will allow for any type of scaling. That is, one could e.g. choose to let
the scaling be uniform for all three components, or keep one constant and scale the remaining
two components by dierent rations, etc. The possibilities are numerous and can thus most
likely be made to t the requirements of any end user.
Hence, as this approach ts perfectly with the initially proposed procedure for nding the
ultimate capacity based on a xed level of shear stress and a single moment acting about an
asymmetrical axis, then this is the idea that will be adopted for implementation. This will
then be done in a way where the user will dene three relational scaling factors for each of
the three shear stress distributions, i.e. Kx, Ky , Kz , and the code will then vary the resulting
superposed shear stress distribution between zero and yield by a scaling factor K . That is,
the shear stress distribution is scaled as

= K Ky Qy + Kz Qz + KxMx (4.1)
Thus, the method for the overall system analysis is to apply a single moment acting about
an asymmetrical axis and a xed level of shear stress dened as given in Eq. (4.1). The
asymmetrical axis is then assumed rotated full circle in appropriate steps, thus yielding the
ultimate capacity of any moment combination at that xed level of shear forces and torque.
It is noted that by selecting this formulation for shear inclusion, the dependency between
bending moments and shear forces are eectively neglected as there is no redistribution of
the shear stresses in the present formulation. That is, the relation between e.g. the bending
moment about the horizontal axis My and the vertical shear force Qz is not included in the
present load model. Further, the applied shear stress distribution given by Eq. (4.1) is
assumed linear elastic, ideal plastic, such that the shear stress in any individual plate of the
hull cross section cannot exceed the yield shear stress y dened as the mean shear stress at
plate collapse sc (see Eq. (5.54), Section 5.6.7) for each plate.
4.2.3 Accidental Loads & Probabilistic Reliability Analysis

Before leaving this section on the load modeling and continuing to the overall system analysis
of the entire hull cross section, a few comments on the aspects of accidental loads would be
appropriate to conclude the loading topic. Further, a few observations about the probabilistic
reliability analysis will be presented.
As stated earlier the task of determining both the initial and the accidental loads is considered
beyond the scope of the present research. However, two methods of obtaining information
for the collision scenario can be suggested. First of all, there is the very obvious method of
consulting actual collision damage reports. Here information about the location and extent
of the structural damages caused by the collision are available for consideration. Based on
this information the appropriate members (in the form of beam-columns) can be removed
from the hull cross section to simulate the damage and thus, an evaluation of the ultimate
capacity of the damaged vessel can be performed.
An alternative approach would be to try to estimate the potential damages arising from a
ctitious collision. A very elaborate scheme for doing exactly this, has been published by
Terndrup Pedersen et al. [37, 36]. Here a probabilistic analysis of the risk of collision is taken
as basis for an overlying evaluation of the consequences of such a collision in the form of
probable damage extent and location on the struck vessel. The method is applied to Roll-on-
Roll-o (RoRo) vessels traveling on a given route with crossing trac of general merchant
4.3. System Analysis 39
vessels etc. Such a framework would obviously also be applicable to obtain information on
collision damages.
Regarding the grounding scenario, then again there is the obvious means of getting informa-
tion by consulting actual damage reports. Alternatively, analytical methods for evaluating
the extent of grounding damages, e.g. as those suggested by Cerup Simonsen [43], may be
employed to obtain the damage condition of the structure.
Finally, on the topic of probabilistic reliability analysis two possible usages of the present
model can be thought of: One, direct implementation for the evaluation of the hull capacity
or two, basis for calibration of even more simplied models. Along these lines the direct
implementation scheme was used by e.g. Melchior Hansen [17] when he performed a mean
out-crossing rate analysis to evaluate the reliability of a vessel, in the combined loading
of a horizontal bending moment and a vertical shear force. Here, the ultimate capacity
was determined by a beam-column approach. Further, Friis Hansen [18] applied Melchior
Hansen's beam-column approach to, in a probabilistic sense, calibrate a simple plastic hinge
model for the ultimate strength based on the model correction factor method.
4.3 System Analysis

As described in the introduction the basic idea is to consider each stiened panel in the cross
section as a beam-column. Moreover, it was assumed that each beam-column reacts inde-
pendently of the adjacent beam-columns. The beauty of this scheme is that the structural
behavior of the beam-column then only is a function of how the ends of the beam-column
are displaced and/or rotated. Thus, when the load-displacement pattern is known for each
beam-column in the whole hull cross section, i.e. Pi(i ; ) is known, the system analysis can
easily be performed.
Following the assumption that collapse occurs between two adjacent frames and further
assuming that the frames do not deform (i.e. plane sections remain plane), the system
analysis is performed by application of the forced curvature principle. Since plane sections
remain plane, the curvature will be proportional to the angle the strain-plane is rotated
about the instantaneous neutral axis of the cross section dened as being where the strain
is zero. This angle will again be equivalent with a bending moment about the same axis,
which is obtained by summation of the end forces Pi(i; ) times the leverage i. Thus, by
varying the rotation angle of the strain-plane, the cross section is eectively loaded with a
set of dierent bending moments. That is, by forcing a rotation of the strain-plane, i.e. a
specic curvature, any bending moment can be reproduced, explaining the name { forced
curvature principle.
Figure 4.4: Denition sketch for the forced curvature principle

in the case of pure horizontal bending.
4.3.1 Pure Horizontal Bending

Application of the principle is easiest explained for the simple case of pure horizontal bending
with a constant shear stress level. Assuming an intact hull, the cross section will be sym-
metric about the vertical axis, and consequently the instantaneous neutral axis about which
the strain-plane rotates, will be horizontal. In this case, the position of the strain-plane can
be described by only two parameters (See Fig. 4.4):
1. The translation of the origin of the strain-plane, i.e. the position INA of the instanta-
neous neutral axis, and
2. the angle of rotation of the strain-plane.
It is observed that since the instantaneous neutral axis is horizontal, the position of each
beam-column can be described by just one coordinate, namely zi. Thus, following the
notation on Fig. 4.4 the distance for the instantaneous neutral axis to the i th beam-column
becomes i = zi , INA and the total end displacement for the same beam-column i = 2i
where the times two is because both ends of the beam-column are being displaced.
Further, as the translation INA of the origin of the strain-plane is identical to the position
of the instantaneous neutral axis it can be found by demanding that the summation of the
end forces Pi(i; ) of all the, say k, beam-columns equals zero, i.e.
X
k
N () = Pi (i; ) = 0 (4.2)
i=1
However, due to the nonlinear response of the beam-columns, the position of the instanta-
neous neutral axis will be dependent on the prescribed rotation of the strain-plane. Hence,
the force equilibrium becomes
X
k
N () = Pi (2[zi , INA()]; ) = 0 (4.3)
i=1
from which the position INA() of the instantaneous neutral axis can be determined itera-
tively for any prescribed curvature.
When the position of this axis is known, the leverage i to each of the beam-columns is also
known. Thus, a relation between the total moment response MINA of the entire cross section
about the instantaneous neutral axis and the rotation angle can be established as
X
k
MINA() = fPi (i; ) i + Mi ()g (4.4)
i=1
i.e. as the sum over all beam-columns of the axial response times the leverage plus the local
clamped end moment. With respect to the later, i.e. the local clamped end moment, then
this will amount to an insignicant contribution compared with the moment produced by
the force times leverage for all the beam-columns. Of course neglecting this contribution will
cause the nal total moment to be slightly less than otherwise, but in view of the overall
level of simplication inherent to the beam-column approach, this is a quite acceptable
approximation. Hence, the total moment response about the instantaneous neutral axis is
taken to be
X
k
MINA() = Pi (i; ) i (4.5)
i=1
for a given rotation of the strain-plane.

Figure 4.5: Denition of the local beam-column reference system.

4.3.2 Beam-Column End Displacement and Rotation
Up until this point, the end rotation ' of the beam-column has simply been taken as equal
to the rotation of the strain-plane. This is of course true, but only if the load-displacement
response of the beam-column is known based on a reference system which is coinciding with
the global one shown in Fig. 4.4. However, with respect to the structural description of
a each beam-column, it would be much more convenient if this was established in a local
reference system, natural to the beam-column, as shown in Fig. 4.5. This local reference
system would however, only in special cases be coinciding with the global reference system for
the entire hull cross section, due the dierent orientation of the beam-columns. Therefore, a
description is needed of how the end rotation ' of the beam-column in local reference system
relates to the rotation of the stress plane.
Obtaining this relation will rstly require denition of the beam-columns orientation with
respect to the global reference system. Fig. 4.6 shows an arbitrary oriented beam-column
located in the global reference system. From the gure, it is noted that the local reference
system is rotated an angle /2 about the local y-axis, compared to the global reference system.
This is for reasons pertinent to conveniently describing the beam-column behavior, which
will be dealt with in the next chapter. This does not have any in uence on the end rotation
' of the beam-column, as the orientation of both the global and the local y-axis is unaected
by this, i.e. are identical.
Therefore, introducing the angle between the global y-axis and the local y-axis, as shown
in the gure, will be sucient to uniquely dene the orientation of the beam-column. If this
angle is dierent form zero, then the beam-column will be exposed to an end rotation about
both the local y- and z-axis. However, to simplify the description of the beam-columns
structural behavior, it is assumed that only an end rotation 'e about the local y-axis is
acting on the beam-column.
Figure 4.6: Sketch of the transformation between the local beam-column reference
system, the global coordinate system, and the current strain-plane.
Thus, given the angle dening the orientation of the beam-column, the relation between
this eective end rotation and the rotation of the strain-plane becomes
'e = cos( ) (4.6)
which easily can be seen from the denition sketch in Fig. 4.6. Hence, as the angle is
a constant, then the axial response of the beam-column, in relation to the overall system
analysis, still remains only a function of the end displacement i and the rotation of the
strain-plane. Moreover, as the end displacement depends only on the xed geometry of the
hull cross section and the rotation of the strain-plane, then in the context of the global system
analysis, the beam-column response is essentially just a function of one single parameter,
namely the rotation of the strain-plane.
4.3.3 General Load Condition

The expansion of the forced curvature principle to a asymmetrical instantaneous neutral axis
which then inherently will be able to handle damaged cross sections, i.e. no requirement on
any symmetry about the vertical axis, is now a straight forward process.
First of all, it is now necessary to use both coordinates to describe the position of each
individual beam-column, namely (yi; zi ). Moreover, by still requiring that plane sections
remain plane, the asymmetrical instantaneous neutral axis can be described by only one
extra parameter being the angle between it and the horizontal global y-axis as shown in
Figure 4.7: Denition sketch for the forced curvature principle

extended to asymmetrical bending.
Figure 4.8: Plane sketch of the the forced curvature principle

with asymmetrical bending.
Fig. 4.7. Combined with the original parameter used, i.e. the distance INA from the baseline
to the instantaneous neutral axis, the position is fully described. However, a redenition
of INA is required to avoid problems when the instantaneous neutral axis is parallel to the
vertical z-axis, i.e. for = /2.
If the previously used denition of INA in the case of pure horizontal bending was used,
it would be impossible to determine what INA would be for = /2. Either, it would be
an innity of possible solutions in the case where the global vertical z-axis would coincide
with the instantaneous neutral axis, or there would be no solution if the two axis where
parallel at a distance. To overcome this, the denition of the distance INA is changed to
be the perpendicular distance from the center of the baseline (i.e. the origin of the global
coordinate system) to the instantaneous neutral axis as shown in Fig. 4.8. By use of plane
geometry the distance from the instantaneous neutral axis to the i th beam-column, i.e. the
leverage, then becomes3
i = ,INA , y sin + z cos (4.7)
where the formulation used to obtain this expression is such that it insures that the leverage
i will be positive in the tension zone, and negative in the compression zone of the hull cross
section. Thus, given a rotation of the strain-plane about the instantaneous neutral axis,
the resulting total end displacement i for the i th beam-column can be obtained from the
leverage in exactly the same way as in the simple case of pure horizontal bending, i.e. as
i = 2i where, again, the times two is because both ends of the beam-column are being
displaced.
With respect to the eective end rotation 'e of the beam-column, then in this case it simply
becomes
'e = cos( , ) (4.8)
Thus, with the total end displacement i and the eective end rotation 'e established, the
response of the beam-column is obtainable, as this is a function of only those two parameters.
The rest of the system analysis therefore follows the exact same procedure as in the case of
pure bending. That is, the position of the instantaneous neutral axis INA is found as
X
Pi (i; 'e;i) = 0 ; INA (4.9)
i ;
and the corresponding bending moment about the instantaneous neutral axis becomes
X
MINA = Pi (i; 'e;i) i (4.10)
i ;;INA
for a given orientation of the instantaneous neutral axis and rotation of the strain-plane.
3See further Appendix A which presents the entire derivation of the forced curvature principle for an
asymmetrical instantaneous neutral axis.
Figure 4.9: Typical moment-curvature response curve.
4.4 Ultimate Capacity Criterions
Having established the means to perform a system analysis of the entire hull cross section,
based on the beam-column method, the resulting moment-curvature response is obtainable.
In Fig. 4.9 a typical such moment-curvature curve is shown for a ctitious hull cross sec-
tion. Also, the denitions of the hogging and sagging condition along with the curvature, is
graphically presented in the sketch.
Regarding the curvature , then there is a simple geometric relation between it and the
rotation of strain-plane, as shown in the gure. The relation can easily be seen to be
= 2=`, where ` is the length of the cross section being investigated. Thus, even though
the derived system analysis has been expressed in terms of the rotation of strain-plane,
then this could actually just as well have been done with respect to the curvature . The
reason for the shift to the curvature when presenting the results is purely historical { this
is the way it is normally done { hence it eases comparison of the results obtained by the
present method with results published by other authors.
4.4. Ultimate Capacity Criterions 47
4.4.1 Ultimate Shear Capacity
The quantity of actual interest in this study is the ultimate moment capacity of the cross
section in combination with any given, allowable shear stress distribution. By allowable is
understood a non-failure causing shear stress distribution. Hence, to evaluate if a shear
stress distribution is safe, a denition of the ultimate shear capacity of the cross section is
needed.
Shear stresses are, as previous mentioned, assumed to act only on the plating of the cross
section. Consequently, failure is in this context only referring to the state of the plating { not
the entire hull cross section. Moreover, the shear response behavior is assumed linear elastic,
ideal plastic as described in Section 4.2.2. Thus, a reasonable measure for the ultimate shear
capacity will be the yield shear stress distribution y equal to total shear yielding/collapse
of all the plating in the entire cross section.
Hence, given the scaling dened in Eq. (4.1) of the shear causing loads, i.e. horizontal and
vertical shear forces and torque, and under the assumptions described in Section 4.2.2, there
will be a maximum global scaling factor Kmax equivalent to total yielding. That is,

y = Kmax Ky Qy + Kz Qz + KxMx (4.11)
where Kx, Ky , and Kz are the relational scaling factors between the three load components,
which are assumed to be given constants. It is noted that the shear behavior is assumed
linear elastic, ideal plastic. Thus, in the discrete formulation of the hull cross section where
the plating is divided into, say N , individual plates, the shear stress for the ith plate,
globally scaled by K , is taken as
(
= K Ky Q y + Kz Q z + Kx M x if K K y Qy + K z Q z + Kx M x < y;i (4.12)
y;i else
Hence, by applying the cut-o scheme in Eq. (4.12), the maximum global scaling factor Kmax
can be determined iteratively using Eq. (4.11). Thereafter, any scaling K between zero and
this value (Kmax) will then represent a safe, non-failure causing shear stress distribution.
Relating a specic scaling factor K to a set of equivalent loads in the form of Mx, Qy , and
Qz poses however, quite bigger problems because of the assumed linear elastic, ideal plastic
behavior. As long as all the individual plates are in the linear elastic range of the shear, then
as the shear stress distributions Qy , Qz , and Mx are assumed equivalent to a unit loading,
the shear stress distribution resulting from the scaling by K can be decomposed into the
three shear causing loads as
Qy = KKy (Horizontal shear) (4.13)
Qz = KKz (Vertical shear) (4.14)
Mx = KKx (Torque) (4.15)
However, this scheme cannot be applied in the plastic region. Alternatively, in this part of
the response, the two shear loads could be approximated as
X
N
Qy = KKy Qy ;iAi (4.16)
i
X
N
Qz = KKz Qz ;iAi (4.17)
i
where Ai is the eective shear area of the ith plate, and the the cut-o scheme in Eq. (4.12)
is applied to the KKy Qy ;i and KKz Qz ;i terms respectively. With respect to the torque,
the knowledge of the center of torsion is needed to perform a similar approximation. This
center will however, move as plasticity caused by the shear stress becomes more and more
dominant. Thus, to establish the shear loads equivalent to a scaling factor K a complete
geometric cross section analysis will have to be performed.
Including this in the present procedure would on the other hand undermine the selected
method of simply scaling the shear stress distributions caused by a unit loading to obtain
the net shear loading on the hull cross section. If the complete geometric cross section
analysis was to be performed, then one could more rationally use it the other way around,
namely to establish the net shear stress distribution for any selected set of shear loads and
torque. Moreover, the primary reason for initially selecting the method of simply scaling
the shear stress distributions caused by a unit loading was to avoid performing a complete
geometric cross section analysis, mainly in the interest of overall speed of the procedure.
The establishment of the exact shear loads corresponding to any global scaling factor K , has
therefore been deemed beyond the scope of the present research and consequently neglected
in the following. However, in the cases of zero torsional loading on the hull cross section,
an exception is made and the scheme in Eqs. (4.16) and (4.17) is applied to approximate
respectively the vertical and horizontal shear load corresponding to the current global scal-
ing factor. This approximation is then used later, both in the verication of the present
procedure in Chapter 6, and in Chapter 7 where the present procedure is applied to an ultra
large crude carrier in intact as well as damaged condition.
Finally on the topic of ultimate shear capacity of the hull cross section, it is noted, that
because the shear stresses are assumed to act exclusively on the plating of the hull cross
section, there will be a moment capacity of the section provided by the stieners even at the
ultimate shear capacity. Therefore, given the assumptions imposed on the system analysis
scheme, total failure of the entire hull cross section cannot be caused solely by the two
shear forces and/or the torque, in any combination. This since the applied modeling of the
shear stress, always will allow for a residual moment capacity of the stieners to carry an
additional bending load. Hence, the present procedure can only reveal an upper limit for
the magnitude of the shear causing forces.
4.5. Implementation Notes 49
4.4.2 Ultimate Moment Capacity
Given a shear stress distribution the moment-curvature response of the hull cross section
will be as sketched in Fig. 4.9. Thus, it is obvious that the ultimate moment capacity easily
can be determined, simply as the maximum and minimum moment giving the ultimate
capacity in hogging and sagging condition respectively.
The ultimate moment capacity for a given rotation of the instantaneous neutral axis, can
then be expressed as
( )
dMINA ( )
MINA,u = M () d = 0 ^ N () = 0 (4.18)
given that the moment MINA() is at least C1 . This moment can then easily be decomposed
into the equivalent horizontal and vertical moments as
My,u = MINA,u cos (Horizontal moment) (4.19)

Mz,u = MINA,u sin (Vertical moment) (4.20)
However, it should be noted that in the present formulation, the moment-curvature response
is only C0 , i.e. continuous. This is due to the idealized, piecewise linear beam-column
response explained in detail in Chapter 5. Nevertheless, this poses no real problem, as
the method is intended for implementation in a numerical framework, and thus numerous
methods are available for nding (local) extrema without knowledge of any gradient.
4.5 Implementation Notes

Implementation of the system analysis in a computer code is generally a simple and straight
forward procedure. Thus, only a very general outline of the implementation scheme will be
presented.
The rst step will be to establish the maximum shear loading the cross section can withstand.
That is, nd Kmax from Eq. (4.11). With this value known, the shear loading can then be
varied at what ever discreteness level wanted between K 2 [0; Kmax], i.e. from zero to total
yield shear loading. For each level of shear loading, i.e. a given K , the next step would then
be to vary the angle , dening the orientation of the instantaneous neutral axis, full circle.
That is, at a chosen level of subdivision let 2 [0; 2]. For each angle the task will then
be to determine the ultimate moment capacity about the instantaneous neutral axis in both
hogging and sagging condition, i.e. nd the maximum and minimum response moment MINA.
When this has been completed the response of the cross section is known, and the objective
of the code obtained.
Hence, nding the maximum and minimum response moment MINA is then the core facility of
the code. First of all, looking on the problem from a top-down perspective, then the moment
about the instantaneous neutral axis is essentially known as a function of the rotation of the
strain-plane through Eq. (4.10). Thus, obtaining the ultimate moment is a simple question
of applying an iterative procedure hunting for either a minimum or a maximum. However,
for each dierent rotation there is actually the following three steps to complete to obtain
the equivalent response moment.
Step one is to build the load-displacement curves for each beam-column in the entire hull cross
section. This is necessary because the end rotation ' of the individual beam-columns { which
is a part of the loading on the beam-column, and thus will change the load-displacement
response { is a function of the rotation of the strain-plane as shown in Eq. (4.8). How
the load-displacement curves can be established is explained in Chapter 5 and will therefore
not be addressed presently. The response will simply be taken as known information. Thus,
with the load-displacement curves available for the current , step two is then to iterate
for the position INA of the instantaneous neutral axis, the location of which is found by
requiring force equilibrium, as expressed in Eq. (4.9). Upon completion of this task the
response moment is then obtainable by application of Eq. (4.10), which then is the third an
last step to complete.
The procedure is then completed, and the result can if wanted be decomposed into equivalent
loadings in the global reference system by application of Eqs. (4.13) through (4.15) for the
shear loading part, i.e. horizontal and vertical shear forces and torque, and Eqs. (4.19)
and (4.20) for the moment part.
4.6 Summary
To summarize, a procedure for the establishment of the ultimate moment capacity about an
arbitrary oriented instantaneous neutral axis has been established. The structural response
of the hull cross section is based on Navier's hypothesis, with the position of the instantaneous
neutral axis dened as the zero strain line. The procedure can handle the description of both
intact and damaged conditions of the hull cross section. Moreover, the derived method of
system analysis can, for a given relational scaling between the three shear stress causing
loadings, solve for the ultimate net shear loading, dened as total shear yielding of the
plating part of the hull cross section.
In relation to this, the obtained knowledge of the ultimate shear capacity of the hull cross
section, has been incorporated in a scheme capable of establishing the ultimate moment
response for any shear loading between zero and yield shear loading. Further, this scheme
has been presented in a form suitable for implementation in a computer code.
4.6. Summary 51
Finally, for the purpose of clarity, the question of how the beam-column load-displacement
response can be obtained has, in the present formulation, been left out for later concern.
However, necessary assumptions pertinent to the beam-column description has been made
when needed throughout the derivation of the system analysis.

Chapter 5
Beam-Columns in Combined Loading
5.1 Introduction
In the previous chapter a scheme for the evaluation of the ultimate and post-ultimate strength
of a hull cross section was established based on a beam-column approach. That is, the
idea is to consider the entire cross section to be made up of a number of beam-columns
each consisting of one stiener and the attached plating. The assumption of the scheme
was then, that the load-displacement response of these beam-columns exposed to a general
loading consisting of moment, shear and torque was known.
It was further shown that the shear and torque part of the general load condition of the
beam-column, essentially could be broken down to just a shear force, or more accurately a
shear stress level in the plate part of the beam-column. Therefore, to meet the assumptions
made so far, a description of the structural behavior of beam-columns in a combined loading
consisting of a bending moment and a shear force is required. Once such a description
has been established, the needed load-displacement curves for each beam-column can be
calculated and thereby, the circle is closed and the previously stated beam-column scheme
can work. The rest of this chapter will therefore be devoted to establishing such a framework
for describing and calculating the structural behavior of a beam-column exposed to this
loading, i.e. a bending moment and a shear force, from collapse in tension to collapse in
compression.
When previously formulating the the beam-column approach, it was necessary to make two
assumptions: One, collapse occurs locally between two adjacent frames and two, each beam-
column react independently of the adjacent beam-columns. Based on theses two assumptions
the beam-column approach can easily be applied to mimic the behavior of the entire hull cross
section. However, to take the formulation of the procedure one step further in detailedness,
there are a few more points that need to be considered before the derivation of the beam-
column analysis can be completed.
53
54 Chapter 5. Beam-Columns in Combined Loading
5.2 Initial Imperfections
So far, nothing has been stated about the state of the cross section. Implicitly then, it must
be understood to be in perfect initial state. Knowledge of the real world however, tells that
this is never the case. There will always be imperfections in any real structure. Consequently,
if these imperfections have any in uence on the ultimate capacity of a structure they should
preferably be included in any model designed to calculate that quantity.
Numerous such imperfection can be listed for any given structure. Some related to the
method of manufacture, some related to properties of the materials used, etc. For ship
structures three key imperfection can readily be listed:
Initial de ection of the stieners.
Initial de ection of the plating between stieners.
Residual stress caused by welding.
All of these must be expected to have some in uence on the ultimate capacity of the cross
section. However, the level of diculty each poses with respect to possible implementation
is vastly dierent. In the previous chapter, considerations made on the load modeling aspect
of the ultimate capacity evaluation scheme, lead to the conclusion that the beam-column
would be considered as a two-component beam made up of a stiener part and a plate part.
This approach was proven very benecial when the eects of the shear forces and the torque
was to be applied to each beam-column. In this scheme an initial de ection of the stiener
in the plane perpendicular to the plate is easily accounted for. However, initial de ection of
the plate, and especially residual stresses in the plate, poses far bigger problems.
Initial de ection of the plate and residual stresses could both be accounted for by choosing the
Marguerre equations to describe the plate behavior. The solution scheme would then have
to be an incremental procedure, where the collapse load was found by slowly incrementing
the applied load. Needless to say, this would be very time consuming to solve for all plates
in the entire cross section. On the other hand, if the the initial de ection was ignored,
then the Marguerre equations reduces to the von Karman equations. The solution of these
equations would nevertheless still have to be incremental due to the presence of residual
stresses. If however, also these where ignored, then the von Karman equations becomes
solvable in the post-buckling region by application of the perturbation technique which is
a much faster solution scheme than the incremental method otherwise needed. Moreover,
seen in light of the ndings in Chapter 3, where the ultimate strength of a laser welded
panel was investigated, one of the conclusions was that the inclusion of residual stresses
only marginally in uences the load-displacement response { then the exclusion of this eect
seems justiable. Thus, to keep the analysis reasonably simple in light of the requirement
for rapidness of the procedure, the choice has been made to only include the imperfection
of the stiener and to disregard the eect of both an initial de ection of the plate, and any
residual stresses in the plate.
5.3. Idealized Beam-Column Behavior 55
Figure 5.1: Idealized stress-strain curve for a single beam-column.

5.3 Idealized Beam-Column Behavior
Having decided on the inclusion/exclusion of initial imperfection an idealized model of the
structural behavior of a beam-column can be established. In Fig. 5.1 an idealized stress-
strain curve for a beam-column is shown. The behavior can be separated into four dierent
regions:
Plastic tension region.
Elastic tension region.
{ Plate yielding.
Elastic compression region.
{ Plate buckling.
{ Plate collapse.
Plastic compression region (unloading).
Together, these make up the entire idealized load-displacement behavior of the beam-column.
In the following sections each of these four regions will be addressed. First however, a short
general outline of the procedure is presented to facilitate the further reading.
The requirement of the procedure will be to produce the load-displacement response of a
beam-column exposed to the loading previous dened in Chapter 4. Hence, the variable
loading applied will be an axial force P and an end rotation ' of the beam-column resulting
from the bending moment. Further, two constant load components in the form of a uniformly
distributed load q mimicking e.g. the hydrostatic pressure, and a shear stress arising from
the global shear and torsional loading, was to be accounted for.
Moreover, it was decided to model the beam-column as a two-component beam made up of
a stiener part and a plate part. The shear stress was assumed to act solely on the plate
part of the beam-column, and regarding the uniformly distributed load then this load will
be assumed to act solely on the stiener part of the beam-column. Otherwise, the solution
of the von Karman equations cannot be obtained by the perturbation technique.
With this in mind, and looking at the idealized load-displacement behavior in Fig. 5.1, it is
observed that in essence three dierent types of models are needed to accurately describe
the entire response range. Starting in the middle, the behavior in the elastic tension and
compression region can be handled by an elastic solution to the classical beam-column prob-
lem { at least up until the rst nonlinearities are introduced at plate buckling and yielding,
respectively. Moreover, the range in which the elastic solution is valid can be extended fur-
ther by application of the eective width concept making it possible to trace the response
behavior all the way up to the nal elastic compressive collapse dened as rst yield based
on the von Mises stress. With respect to tensile collapse, then the eective width can also
be applied to model the assumed yielding of the plate prior to the stiener.
The compressive post-collapse response is described by a simple plastic three-hinge mecha-
nism, allowing for the modeling of the decreasing load-carrying capacity the beam-column
will exhibit after collapse. Further, to account for the buckling/collapse behavior of the plate
part of the beam-column, the eective width principle is applied allowing the plastic hinge
solution to re ect the lower than yield strength compressive load capacity of the plate.
Finally, the tensile plastic behavior is assumed ideal in the sense that the response of the
beam-column will remain constant for any further straining beyond tensile collapse. That
is, the plastic response in tension will remain equal to the tensile collapse load.
This is then the foundation upon which the load-displacement response for the beam-column
will have to be established. Four dierent regions of response describable by three dierent
models, which all will be elaborated on in the following.
5.4 Plastic Tension Region

In this region the whole cross section of the beam-column is stressed beyond yield capacity
and thus totally plasticized. The behavior is assumed perfectly plastic implying that the
slope of the stress-strain curve equals zero as shown in Fig. 5.1. Thus, the post-ultimate
response of the beam-column will be constant and equal to the ultimate tensile response
which marks the end of the elastic tension range of the response.
5.5. Elastic Tension Region 57
The ultimate load in tension will in the case of zero shear stress and zero uniformly dis-
tributed load, be equal to the the squash load Py. However, in the general case the ultimate
load will be less than the squash load, due to the presence of shear stress in the plate part
of the beam-column, and the bending moment caused by the uniformly distributed load on
the stiener part. Nevertheless, as this is all accounted for in the modeling of the elastic
tension region, the plastic tension region is modeled as constant and equal to the maximum
load obtained from the elastic region.
Finally, there is the necking phenomena pertaining to the plastic tension region that needs to
be considered to fully describe the response. When the axial load reaches the point of necking
the load rapidly drops to zero, and the beam cross section is torn apart. This is normally
related to a very extensive straining of the beam-column. One method to include the necking
phenomena would be to eectively remove beam-columns from the global system analysis
once transgression of a certain strain limit e.g. ve percent, used to identify the initiation of
necking occurs. However, in the present idealized formulation it is assumed that collapse of
the entire hull cross section occurs before necking initiates. That is, the necking phenomena
is eectively neglected.
5.5 Elastic Tension Region

In the elastic tension region the behavior is assumed linear elastic. Further, it is assumed
that the plate will reach yielding before the entire beam-column is plasticized. This assump-
tion is valid for typical ship structures mainly due to design consideration pertinent to the
compressive performance of a stiened panel. Here, general practice dictates that compres-
sive failure of the stiener should be insured to occur after plate buckling, which in general
will require the yield stress of the stiener at least to equal the yield stress of the plate.
In the case of zero shear stress and zero uniformly distributed load, plate yielding prior to
total beam-column failure implies that y,p < y,s is assumed { at least if the eect of the
forced end rotation of the beam-column is also ignored { where y,p and y,s is the yield
stress of the plate and the stiener respectively. As this, for reasons just explained, normally
will be valid for ship structures, it seems for all practical purposes a fair assumption to make
that the plate will reach yielding before the stiener in relation to ship structures.
Considering the implications of this assumption in the presence of shear stress in the plate,
then theses shear stresses are accounted for by considering tensile yielding of the plate as
transgressing of y,p by the von Mises stress v . Thus, shear stresses will reduce the axial
load-carrying capacity of the plate, but will not have any eect on the stiener, which in
general will help to fulll the assumption of the plate yielding before the stiener.
On the other hand, the presence of a uniformly distributed load on the stiener acting
perpendicular to the plate, clutters the validity of the assumption. Together with the forced
end rotation of the beam-column this line load on the stiener will cause a bending moment to
be present in the beam-column. While the resulting moment arising from the end rotation
for all practical reasons will be insignicant due to the comparatively very small angles
actually occurring before total collapse of the entire hull cross section, there is no ignoring
the contribution of the line load. Depending on the sign of this moment, the eect on the
validity of the assumption can go either way.
If the moment results in tensile stresses in the plate part of the beam-column, then obviously
it will only further enforce the assumption of the plate yielding before the stiener. On
the other hand, if compressive stresses are produced in the plate, then there is really no
way of assessing the net result on the assumed behavior of the entire beam-column. The
eect with respect to axial response of the beam-column would be that part of the stiener
will be plasticized before yielding initiates in the plate, a situation that could possibly be
accounted for by application of a transformed cross section of the stiener much like the
planned eective width concept to extend the validity of the linear elastic behavior of the
beam-column even after plate yielding.
Meanwhile, the introduction of the transformed stiener cross section seems, in the author's
opinion, somewhat dubious with respect to its ability to model the growing fully plastic
zone of the stiener. Moreover, choosing to consider stiener yielding as the ultimate tensile
response of the entire beam-column in this situation, will at worst be a somewhat conservative
assumption. This last approach has therefore been decided on as a further needed assumption
to conveniently describe the tensile response of the beam-column.
Consequently, under these assumptions the response will either be linear up until the extreme
ber of the stiener yields, or until the average von Mises stress in the plate reaches yield
capacity. In the rst case this response will be interpreted as the ultimate tensile capacity
of the entire beam-column. In the second case, reaching the yield capacity of the plate will
manifest it self in form of a drop in stiness of the beam-column at continued uploading
as indicated in Fig. 5.1. This loss of stiness is modeled by means of the eective width
principle for the plate. That is, the eective width of the plate is reduced such that when
stressed to the tensile yield strength of the stiener, the equivalent stress in the real, full
eective plate will be the actual tensile yield strength of the plate.
Increasing the tension loading further will eventually lead to the beam-column becoming
totally plasticized. At this point the average von Mises stress in the entire beam-column
equals the yield stress and the behavior changes to the plastic tension region described
earlier.
5.5.1 Stress Assessment

As the assumed behavior is linear elastic, the beam-column can adequately be described by
the standard dierential equation for beams, i.e.
@ 4 w (x) @ 2
EI @x4 + P @x2 (w(x) + w0(x)) = q(x) (5.1)
5.6. Elastic Compression Region 59
Applying the actual boundary conditions and then solving this equation (Eq. (5.1)) will give
rst the out-of-plane de ection w(x), and then derivable from this, the moment M (x). Then,
applying the standard Navier relation between direct stress xx and the sectional forces, the
normal stress distribution at the middle of the beam-column (x = `/2) becomes1
! 2
xx(z) = , A + sinh( `/ ) `(P , P ) + 2P + ' , `2 (PEPw
P Ez Pw 0 q` 0z
,
, PE) P
Eqz (5.2)
2 E
for tensile loading (P < 0), where

s
= ,P
EI
2
PE = EI ` (The Euler load)
Thus, using Eq. (5.2) the stress in the plate and the extreme ber of the stiener can be
found for any tensile axial loading P . This allows for an iteratively scheme to be established
by which the two characteristic loads describing rst plate yielding, and then total tensile
failure of the entire beam-column can be found.
When the axial response load is known for these two characteristic points in the tensile
load-displacement behavior of the beam-column, then the corresponding displacement at
the neutral axis of the beam-column cross section can be approximated by application of the
linear relation
P`
= EA (5.3)
in which the contribution by the out-of-plane de ection of the beam-column has been ignored.
Actually, there will be a nonlinear contribution to the displacement by the de ection, but
this has been found to be insignicant in comparison with the contribution in Eq. (5.3) and
is therefore ignored in the present analysis. Further, seen in light of the other assumptions
made so far in the idealization of the beam-column response, it is quite reasonable to neglect
this higher order contribution to the displacement.
5.6 Elastic Compression Region

The elastic compression region covers the behavior of the beam-column in compression from
the unloaded state to the point where the behavior is totally plastic. Included in this
1 See Appendix B, Eq. (B.8)
transition from elastic to plastic behavior are two distinct phenomena related to the plate
as shown in Fig. 5.1. That is, one: Buckling of the plate eld and two: Final collapse of the
plate eld.
Therefore, considering the plate part of the beam-column rst, it is for an initially perfect
plate (i.e. without any imperfections) the case that when loaded in compression, the plate
will remain perfect until the buckling load is exceeded. That is, there will only be in-plane
displacements but no out-of-plane de ection up until the buckling load is reached.
Continued uploading beyond the critical buckling load will still be characterized as elastic
compression but will very rapidly lead to the collapse load of the plate being reached. At
this point the load-carrying capacity of the plate is exhausted. Assuming that the stiener
which together with the plate makes up the beam-column still is below yielding2, then the
beam-column will still be in the elastic region because it still has load-carrying capacity left.
This capacity will of course eventually be depleted and the collapse load of the beam-column
will be reached marking the end of the elastic compression region and thus also the transition
to the plastic compression region.
In the elastic compression region it is therefore of special concern to establish how to model
the behavior of the plate part of the beam-column to adequately describe the critical buckling
and collapse behavior of the plate alone. In the previous two sections concerning the tension
side of the beam-column response, the plate did not act dierently from the stiener, except
for the possibility of dierent tensile yield strength of the two. Further, in the plastic
compression region of the response, the reaction of the plate will again be similar to that of
the stiener, as they both will be fully plasticized.
Thus, the elastic compression region is in fact the only part of the response of the beam-
column, where the plate part needs to be considered as a plate. That is, this is the only region
where a plate theory is required to accurately describe the response of the beam-column.
Based on previous considerations made in reference to the possible inclusion of initial imper-
fections in the beam-column model, where the emphasis was on the acceptable complexity of
such a plate theory, is was concluded to ignore any imperfections and/or out-of-plane loading
in the plate description. That decision led to the selection of the von Karman equations as
an ideal theory for the plate description.
A description of these von Karman equations will therefore be presented in the following.
However, as the von Karman equations are a sub-set of the more general Marguerre equa-
tions, which allow for combined in-plane loading, out-of-plane loading, and initial de ection
of the plate, these equations will be presented rst and then reduced to the von Karman
equations.
This assumption is generally fullled in ship structures, as argued previously while discussing the elastic
2
tensile behavior of the beam-column, and thus seems fair to make. Further, if the yield stress of the plate
and the stiener are identical, then this assumption will be even more valid.
5.6.1 Marguerre's Equations
Assuming the following notation:
The plate carry in-plane load and a normal load Y per unit area.
The plate has an initial shape given by y? = y?(x; z) assumed small enough to make
the usual approximation for small slopes.
The de ection w of a point in the middle surface of the plate is dened so as after
deformation the total de ection is w + y? in the x , z plane.
And by introducing a stress function which satisfy
;xx = Nz ; ;zz = Nx ; ;zx = ,Nxz (5.4)
Then, following Murray [30] the usual stress-strain relationships given as
Et (" + " ) ; N = Et (" + " ) ; N = Et "
Nz = 1 , (5.5)
2 z x x
1 , 2 x z xz
2(1 + ) xz
2 2
where the strains are "z = v;z + y;z? w;z + w2;z , "x = u;x + y;x? w;x + w2;x , and ";xz = v;x + u;z +
y;z? w;x + y;x? w;z + w;z w;x yields the following two equations

r4 + Et y;zz
? w , 2y ? w + y ? w + w w , w2 = 0
;xx ;zx ;zx ;xx ;zz ;zz ;xx ;zx (5.6)
Dr w , [;xx(y + w);zz , 2;zx(y + w);zx + ;zz (y + w);xx] , Y = 0
4 ? ? ? (5.7)
which are the compatibility and equilibrium equation respectively. These two equations
(Eqs. (5.6) and (5.7)) are Marguerre's simultaneous nonlinear partial dierential equations.
5.6.2 Application { The von Karman Equations

The governing equations of an initially perfectly at plate (i.e. y? = 0), carrying uniformly
distributed in-plane loading (i.e. is quadratic in x and z, cf. Fig. 5.2) and no transverse
load (i.e. Y = 0) are the force equilibrium in the x- and z-direction (Eq. (5.8)) and moment
equilibrium (Eq. (5.9)) { together the von Karman equations without transverse loading.
Nz;z + Nxz;x = 0 ; Nx;x + Nxz;z = 0 (5.8)
Dr4w , Nz w;zz ,2Nxz w;zx , Nxw;xx = 0 (5.9)
It is seen that the moment equilibrium reduces to a linear homogeneous form which denes
an eigenvalue problem. Thus, with Nx and Nz being the tensile loads per unit width or
length of the plate, the critical value of Nz will have a negative sign i.e. be in compression.
Figure 5.2: Square plate with in-plane load z and x.

5.6.3 Post-Buckling Behavior { The Perturbation Technique
To obtain the post-buckling behavior the perturbation technique is applied (cf. Murray [30]).
The perturbation technique assumes that the displacement components u, v, and w can be
expanded in terms of an arbitrary perturbation parameter " about the point of buckling.
At this point the perturbation parameter is by denition zero (" = 0) which conforms with
the singularity existing at the point of buckling, where up until buckling occurs the plate
remains perfectly at (w = 0), and then when the critical stress is reached snaps out-of-plane
and assumes its lowest buckling mode. The perturbation parameter " is a function of the
applied load and the central de ection. It is independent of the coordinates x and z. Thus,
the expansion of the displacement components becomes
X
1 X
1 X
1
w= w(x; z)(n) "n ; u = u(x; z)(n) "n ; v = v(x; z)(n) "n (5.10)
n=1;3;::: n=0;2;::: n=0;2;:::
Inserting these power series (Eq. (5.10)) into the strain expressions neglecting second order
terms of the in-plane displacements u and v, but keeping the second order terms of the
de ection w yields
X
1 1 X
1 X 1
"z = v;z(n) "n +
2 m=1;3 n=1;3 w (m) w (n) "m+n
;z ;z (5.11)
n=0;2
X
1 X
1 X 1
"x = u(;xn) "n + 12 w;x(m) w;x(n)"m+n (5.12)
n=0;2 m=1;3 n=1;3
1
X X
1 X
1
"xz = v;x(n) + u(;zn) "n + w;z(m) w;x(n) "m+n (5.13)
n=0;2 m=1;3 n=1;3
where { for writing convenience { the dependency of x and z in the functions u, v, and w has
been left out and the innite continuation of the power series in either even or odd integers
is self implied.
Substituting this into the stress-strain relationships (Eq. (5.5)) gives the following equations
for the in-plane forces
Et (" + " )
Nz = 1 , 2 z x
1 Et
X
(n) + u(n) "n + X X 1 Et w (m) w (n) + w (m) w(n) "m+n
1 1
= v
n=0;2 |1 , m=1;3 n=1;3 |2 1 ,
2 ;z ;x 2 ;z ;z ;x ;x
: {z } : {z }
=Nz(n) =Nz(mn)
Et (" + " )
Nx = 1 , 2 x z
1 Et
X n X 1 X 1 1 Et
= u (n ) + v ( n) " + w (m) w (n) + w (m) w(n) "m+n
n=0;2 |1 , m=1;3 n=1;3 |2 1 ,
2 ;x ;z 2 ;x ;x ;z ;z
: {z } : {z }
=Nx(n) =Nx(mn)
Nxz = 2(1Et "

+ ) xz
=
X
1 Et v(n) + u(n) "n + X
1 X 1 Et w(m) w(n) "m+n
;x ;z ;z ;x
n=0;2 |2(1 + ) {z } m=1;3 n=1;3 |2(1 + ){z }
: (n)
=Nxz : (mn)
=Nxz
which { with the introduced notation { can be written in a short form as

X
1 X
1 X
1
Nz = Nz(n) "n + Nz(mn) "m+n (5.14)
n=0;2 m=1;3 n=1;3
X
1 X
1 X
1
Nx = Nx(n) "n + Nx(mn) "m+n (5.15)
n=0;2 m=1;3 n=1;3
X
1 X
1 X
1
Nxz = Nxz(n) "n + Nxz(mn) "m+n (5.16)
n=0;2 m=1;3 n=1;3
where
Et v(n) + u(n)
Nz(n) = 1 , (5.17)
2 ;z ;x
(m) (n)
Nz(mn) = 2(1Et w w
, 2) ;z ;z + w (m) w (n)
;x ;x (5.18)
Et u(n) + v(n)
Nx(n) = 1 , (5.19)
2 ;x ;z
(m) (n)
Nx(mn) = 2(1Et w w
, 2) ;x ;x + w (m) w (n)
;z ;z (5.20)
(n) (n)
Nxz(n) = 2(1Et v + u;z
+ ) ;x
(5.21)
Nxz(mn) = 2(1Et w(m) w(n)

+ ) ;z ;x
(5.22)
Written out, the rst terms in the power series Eqs. (5.14) through (5.16) the following
expressions, truncated to n = 0; 1; 2 and m = 1 is obtained
Nz = Nz(0) "0 + Nz(2) "2 + Nz(11) "1+1 (5.23)
Nx = Nx(0) "0 + Nx(2) "2 + Nx(11) "1+1 (5.24)
Nxz = Nxz(0) "0 + Nxz(2) "2 + Nxz(11) "1+1 (5.25)
which inserted into the force and moment equilibrium equations (Eqs. (5.8) and (5.9)) yields
after collecting the terms having the same order of "
(0) (0) 0 (2) (2)
Nx;x + Nxz;z = 0 ; Nx;x (11) + N (11) "2 = 0
+ Nxz;z " + Nx;x + Nxz;z + Nx;x xz;z
(0) (0) 0 (2) (2)
Nz;z + Nxz;x = 0 ; Nz;z (11) + N (11) "2 = 0
+ Nxz;x " + Nz;z + Nxz;x + Nz;z xz;x
Dr4w , Nz w;zz ,2Nxz w;zx , Nxw;xx = 0 ;

n 4 (1) (0) (1) o
Dr w , Nz w;zz , 2Nxz(0) w;xz(1) , N (0) w (1) "1 +
x ;xx
n 4 (3) (2) (11) (1) (0) (3) (2) (11) (1)
Dr w , Nz + Nz w;zz , Nz w;zz , 2 Nxz + Nxz w;xz , 2Nxz(0) w;xz
(3)
(1) o
, Nx(2) + Nx(11) w;xx , Nx(0) w;xx
(3) "3 +
n (2) (11) (3) (2) (11) (3) (2) (11) (3) o 5
, Nz + Nz w;zz , 2 Nxz + Nxz w;xz , Nx + Nx w;xx " = 0
Since the perturbation parameter " is an arbitrary parameter, each coecient of the power
series must vanish. This leads to the innite set of successive linear partial dierential
equations
(0) + N (0) = 0
Nx;x (5.26)
xz;z
(0) + N (0) = 0
Nz;z (5.27)
xz;x
Dr w , Nz(0) w;zz
4 (1) (1) , 2N (0) w(1) , N (0) w (1) = 0
xz ;xz x ;xx (5.28)

(2) + N (2) = , N (11) + N (11)

Nx;x xz;z x;x xz;z (5.29)

(2) + N (2) = , N (11) + N (11)

Nz;z xz;x z;z xz;x (5.30)
Dr4w(3) , Nz(0) w;zz
(3) , 2N (0) w(3) , N (0) w (3) =
(2) (11) xz(1) ;xz (2)
x ;xx
(1) (2) (11) (1)
Nz + Nz w;zz + 2 Nxz + Nxz(11) w;xz + Nx + Nx w;xx (5.31)
and so on for higher powers of " (i.e. greater than 3). Together, these six equations then
constitutes the third order perturbation approximation to the post-buckling behavior of the
plate eld.
Let a given set of adequate boundary conditions for the plate be given. Then, the information
obtainable by solving these six equation can be investigated in general terms. Doing this,
it is rst of all seen that the rst two equations (Eqs. (5.26) and (5.27)) express the pre-
buckling in-plane force equilibrium. Thus, the solution to these two equations will be the
pre-buckling in-plane displacements u(0) and v(0) .
Next, the moment equilibrium in Eq. (5.28) is recognized as an eigenvalue problem of the
form (A , B) = 0. Its solution is the buckling load and the out-of-plane de ection
pattern immediately after buckling occurs. However, no information on the magnitude of the
de ection can be derived from this equation. That is, the de ection solution obtained from
the eigenvalue problem, say w~(1) , relates to the real out-of-plane de ection as w~(1) = w(1) ,
where is an arbitrary scaling factor.
Finally, the force equilibrium in Eqs. (5.29) and (5.30) gives the in-plane displacement pattern
after buckling, i.e. the post-buckling displacements. However, as the right-hand side of
these two equations is a function of the out-of-plane de ection w(1) squared, which is known
only in shape not in magnitude, then these two equation only gives a scaling between the
post-buckling in-plane displacements (u(2) and v(2) ) and the out-of-plane de ection w(1) at
buckling. In other words, solving the force equilibrium based on the solution to the eigenvalue
problem, w~(1) = w(1) , yields the in-plane displacements u~(2) = 2 u(2) and v~(2) = 2v(2) .
In summary then, solving the rst ve of the equations will give the pre-buckling in-plane
displacements and the buckling load in true quantities, given the boundary conditions. Re-
garding the out-of-plane de ection at buckling, and the post-buckling in-plane displacements,
then these are only determined in shape not magnitude. They are in other words found as
patterns which are true in size but for the arbitrary scaling factor . The question then
arises whether knowing the post-buckling solution only in form is sucient information for
the present case of investigation?
At this point it will be appropriate to recap the objective of the plate investigation. Referring
back to the initial discussion of the elastic compression region, the questions that need to be
answered by the analysis are:
What is the buckling load of the plate? And

what is the post-buckling collapse load of the plate?
The rst question can readily be answered by solving the eigenvalue problem in Eq. (5.28) for
a given set of adequate boundary conditions. However, to answer the second question more
information is needed. A collapse criterion is a pre-requisite for determining the collapse load.
Hence, a choice of collapse criterion need to be made to continue this investigation. To do this
in a consistent rational way, it is not sucient just to state the loading condition to be any
set of adequate boundary conditions. Prior knowledge of the exact actual loading condition
is needed. That is, up until now, all that has been stated about the information obtainable
by solving perturbation equations has been general in the sense that it would apply to any
set of adequate boundary conditions. Unfortunately, this generalized interpretation cannot
be stretched any further, and thus the specic set of boundary conditions for the present
problem must be dened to continue the interpretation of the perturbation equations.
5.6.4 Boundary Conditions

Recalling the assumption made when the beam-column approach was introduced in the
previous chapter { each beam-column reacts independently of adjacent ones, and shear forces
causes constant shear stress in the plate only { reasonable boundary conditions will be that
the plate edges are simply supported and remain straight, and that the in-plane loading is
uni-axial in the longitudinal direction only, given a constant shear stress level in the plate.
Thus, recapping the boundary condition for the plate, they are:
The shear stress is constant along the edges of the plate, i.e. the rst derivative of the
shear strain equals zero, yielding

"xz;z x = b/2 = 0 and "xz;xz = `/2 = 0
The plate is simply supported, i.e. both the de ection it self, and the curvature of the
de ection (the moment) along the edges of the plate equals zero which requires

wx = b/2 ; z = `/2 = 0 ; w;xxx = b/2 = 0 , and w;zz z = `/2 = 0
The plate edges remain straight, i.e. the curvature of the in-plane displacement per-
pendicular to the edge equals zero, giving

u;xxx = b/2 = 0 and v;zz z = `/2 = 0
In-plane uni-axial direct loading in longitudinal direction only, i.e.
Z b/2 Z `/2

N z dx = P and ` Nxdz =0
, b/2
z = `/2
, /2 x = b/2
combined with a constant shear force proportional to the direct in-plane load by a
factor #, i.e.
Z b/2 Z `/2
`P
N xz dx = #P and N xz dz = #
, b/2 z = `/2 , `/2 x = b/2 b
At a rst glance, these boundary conditions all seems to be applicable in their direct form,
and thus the further solution seems to be a straight forward process. However, there are
hidden problems in the above listed boundary conditions, as the uni-axial in-plane loading
P is in fact the quantity sought by the post-buckling analysis.
This becomes evident from expanding e.g. the in-plane, direct load boundary condition by
substitution with Eq. (5.23), yielding
Z b/2 Z b/2
P = N (0) dx + " 2 N (2) + N (11) dx
, b/2 z , b/2 z z
P (0) + P (2) "2 (5.32)
where " is the perturbation parameter.

Similar expansions can be made also for the two shear force boundary conditions. This poses
a problem as the added in-plane load in the post-buckling region P (2) now is coupled with
the perturbation parameter ". Thus, to obtain the post-buckling solution to the in-plane
displacements u(2) and v(2) given only as a function of the perturbation parameter ", one
more relation which can eectively eliminate the P (2) term is needed. This relation can only
come through Eq. (5.31) as this is the only equation not used so far.
Looking at this equation, it is seen that the left-hand-side is formally equal to the left-hand-
side of moment equilibrium in Eq. (5.28). Hence, the left-hand-side dierential operator,
say L(), of Eqs. (5.28) and (5.31) is the same, and will with suitable boundary condition
(present in this analysis) be a self-adjoined dierential operator. That is, it has the property
Z h i
w(1)L(w(3) ) , w(3) L(w(1) ) dA = 0 (5.33)
A
Further, as the right-hand-side of Eq. (5.28) is zero, it then follows from the self-adjoined
property that
Z h (1) (2) (11) (1) (2) (11) (1) i (1)

Nz(2) + Nz(11) w;zz + 2 Nxz + Nxz w;xz + Nx + Nx w;xx w dA = 0 (5.34)
A
i.e. the right-hand-side of Eq. (5.31) times the de ection at buckling w(1) integrated over
the entire area of the plate equals zero. Unfortunately, this expression does not immediately
yield a solution to the problem.
However, by observing the structure of the two equations expressing the force equilibrium
in the post-buckling state (Eqs. (5.29) and (5.30)) two observations about the equations can
be made:
1. If applying only an out-of-plane de ection load, then the post-buckling solution to the
in-plane forces will vary linearly with the de ection squared, and
2. if applying only an in-plane loading, i.e. keeping the plate at, then the post-buckling
solution to the in-plane forces will vary linearly with the load.
The rst point can easily be seen by substituting Eqs. (5.17) through (5.22) into the right-
hand-side of the force equilibrium. The second point arises from the boundary conditions
where a constant ratio # between the direct in-plane load Nz and the shear load Nxz is
prescribed along with the linear behavior of the load expansion found in Eq. (5.32) for a
given ". Thus, it can be concluded that the post-buckling in-plane forces N (2) resulting from
a combined in-plane loading and out-of-plane de ection at a given " can be decomposed into
N (2) = N (2) + N^ (2) P (2) (5.35)
i.e. as the sum of two parts: One proportional to the buckling de ection w(1) squared and
independent of the in-plane loading, and one proportional to the added in-plane post-buckling
load P (2) and independent of the de ection.
In other words, it can be concluded that the ratio between the in-plane forces resulting from
the out-of-plane de ection and in-plane loading respectively, will remain constant equal to
exactly P (2) for any given perturbation (loading) parameter ".
This observation yields the solution to the problem of P (2) being coupled with the perturba-
tion parameter ", as substituting Eq. (5.35) into the equation resulting from the self-adjoint
property (Eq. (5.34)), i.e.
Z h (1) (2) (11) (1) (2) (11) (1) i (1)
Nz(2) + Nz(11) w;zz + 2 Nxz + Nxz w;xz + Nx + Nx w;xx w dA
A Z h i
+P (2) N^z(2) w;zz ^xz(2) w;xz
(1) + 2N (1) + N^ (2) w(1) w (1) dA = 0
x ;xx
A
leads to a solution to the P (2) load term given as

Z h (1) (2) (11) (1) (2) (11) (1) i (1)
P (2) = , A Z h i
N^z(2) w;zz
(1) + 2N^ (2) w (1) + N^ (2) w(1) w (1) dA
xz ;xz x ;xx
A
(5.36)
Thus, the post-buckling in-plane displacements u~(2) and v~(2) for a given given direct/shear
load ratio #, can be obtained by running through the following four steps:
1. Solve the eigenvalue problem in Eq. (5.28) obtaining the in-plane buckling load N (0)
and the buckling de ection w~(1) = w(1) .
2. Solve in the post-buckling force equilibrium in Eqs. (5.29) and (5.30) for the following
two load conditions:
Zero in-plane load combined with the buckling de ection w~(1) yielding the in-plane
displacements u~(2) = 2u(2) and v~(2) = 2 v(2) .
Unit in-plane load combined with zero de ection yielding the in-plane displace-
ments u^(2) and v^(2) .
3. Obtain the constant ratio 2 P (2) between the two in-plane displacement components
from Eq. (5.36) based on the buckling de ection and the two in-plane displacement
solutions.
4. The post-buckling in-plane displacements then becomes
u~(2) = u~(2) + 2 P (2)u^(2)
v~(2) = v~(2) + 2 P (2) v^(2)
It is noted that the obtained post-buckling in-plane displacements still is determined as

u~(2) = 2u(2) and v~(2) = 2v(2) . Hence, the question of whether or not it is sucient for
the present case of investigation to know the in-plane displacements only in shape not in
magnitude, still remains. The nal answer to this question is to be found in the formulation
of the collapse criterion.
5.6.5 Collapse Criterion

The purpose of the collapse criterion is to set a relation between the perturbation (loading)
parameter and the occurrence of plate collapse, thereby enabling the determination of the
ultimate collapse load of the plate eld. To gain such a relation from which the perturbation
parameter " can be found, the following collapse criterion is introduced:
Collapse of the plate occurs when the mean von Mises stress v at the mid-plane
of the plate along one of the unloaded edges reaches the yield stress y.
which is the natural extension of the already introduced tension failure criterion for the
plate, used in the elastic tensile region of the beam-column response.
The von Mises stress, v is given as
v2 = x2 + z2 , xz + 3xz2 (5.37)
for the case of plane stress. Substituting the stress-strain relationships (Eq. (5.5)) into this
expression (Eq. (5.37)) yields

Z `/2
y2t2 , 1` ` Nx2 + Nz2 , NxNz + 3Nxz2 dz =0 (5.38)
, /2 x = b/ 2
where, for the nite set of terms in the power series expanded in Eqs. (5.26) through (5.27)

Nx = Nx(0) + Nx(2) + Nx(11) "2 (5.39)

Nz = Nz(0) + Nz(2) + Nz(11) "2 (5.40)

Nxz = Nxz(0) + Nxz(2) + Nxz(11) "2 (5.41)
Thus, expanding the collapse criterion (Eq. (5.38)) even further by substituting the above
expressions for the in-plane loads, leads to the following second-order equation in "2
2
Ac "2 + Bc "2 + Cc = 0 (5.42)
where
1 Z `/2 2 2
Ac = ` ` Nx(2) + Nx(11) + Nz(2) + Nz(11) , Nx(2) + Nx(11) Nz(2) + Nz(11) +
, /2
2
3 Nxz(2) + Nxz(11)
dz (5.43)
Z `/2 n
Bc = 1` ` 2Nx(0) Nx(2) + Nx(11) + 2Nz(0) Nz(2) + Nz(11) , Nx(0) Nz(2) + Nz(11) ,
, /2
o
Nz(0) Nx(2) + Nx(11) + 6Nxz(0) Nxz(2) + Nxz(11) dz (5.44)
1 Z `/2 n 2 o
Cc = ` ` Nx(0) + Nz(0) 2 , Nx(0) Nz(0) + 3Nxz(0) 2 dz , y2 t2 (5.45)
, /2
So, if the perturbation expansion is limited to second order, then the post-buckling collapse
load can be determined by solving Eq. (5.42) as
, p
B c Bc , 4Ac Cc
"2c = 2Ac (5.46)
and then inserting the collapse perturbation parameter "c in Eqs. (5.39) through (5.41). But,
what happens when the de ection and displacements are known but for a scaling factor?
The previous discussion of the successive linear partial dierential equations, which the
perturbation expansion ended up in (Eqs. (5.26) through (5.31)), lead to the conclusion
that the information gained from solving these equations with respect to the post-buckling
de ection and displacements was limited to w~(1) = w(1), u~(2) = 2 u(2) , and v~(2) = 2v(2)
where is an undetermined scaling factor. With respect to the pre-buckling displacements
then these are known exact, i.e. the true u(0) and v(0) are known.
Referring back to the stress-strain relations expressed in terms of the series expanded dis-
placement components u, v, and w in Eqs. (5.17) through (5.22) it is observed that based
on the present solution the in-plane forces in Eqs. (5.39) through (5.41) becomes

Nx = Nx(0) + Nx(2) + Nx(11) 2"2 (5.47)

Nz = Nz(0) + Nz(2) + Nz(11) 2"2 (5.48)

Nxz = Nxz(0) + Nxz(2) + Nxz(11) 2"2 (5.49)
From this it is evident that the collapse criterion then changes to
2
Ac 2 "2 + Bc 2"2 + Cc = 0 (5.50)
i.e. a second-order equation in 2 "2 which can be solved yielding the same result as in
Eq. (5.46) only the collapse parameter will be in the form of ( ")2c. Hence, the parameter
is just an arbitrary fractional part of the perturbation parameter " and therefore of no
signicance for the result.
Obtaining the critical buckling load and further the ultimate collapse load of the plate eld
in the form of stresses, is thus possible by solving the von Karman equations under the
conditions assumed so far.
5.6.6 Plate Buckling
To determine the buckling load the eigenvalue problem in Eq. (5.28), i.e.
Dr4w(1) , Nz(0) w;zz
(1) , 2N (0) w(1) , N (0) w (1) = 0
xz ;xz x ;xx
needs to be solved. As mentioned earlier (page 64) the eigenvalue problem has the form
(A , B) = 0 where is the eigenvalue and the corresponding eigenvector. This is
the form of the generalized eigenvalue problem and there are numerous references on its
solution (e.g. Bathe and Wilson [2]). In this case the solution is done most conveniently in
a numerical framework consisting of a nite dierence description and the inverse iteration
method (cf. Appendix C).
Introducing the direct/shear ratio Nz =Nxz = tan(') and applying a base load of
N = b2D
2
; Nz = cos(')N ; and Nxz = sin(')N
then from the eigenvalue the classical buckling coecients becomes kz = cos(') and
kxz = sin('), relating the critical stresses as
2E t 2
z;cr = kz 12 (1 , 2 ) b (5.51)
2E t 2
xz;cr = kxz
12 (1 , 2 ) b
(5.52)
Referring back to when the boundary condition was dened for the plate problem, it was
assumed that the in-plane loading consisted of a uni-axial direct loading in the longitudinal
direction combined with a constant shear force proportional to the direct in-plane loading
by a factor #. Thus, the above denition then replaces this factor as # = tan(').
In Fig. 5.3 the critical buckling coecients kz and kxz for direct and shear loading respectively
are shown as buckling interaction curves, i.e. kxz versus kz . The results are obtained by
applying the present procedure to three plates with dierent aspect ratios of 1.0, 1.5, and
3.0. The buckling coecient for pure direct loading is well known to be kz = 4 for a square
plate and also for integer aspect ratios. This is clearly also obtained by the present solution.
The results have further been compared with the buckling solutions in standard text books3
and with results by Murray [30], which all showed excellent agreement.
It can therefore with condence be conclude that the present model predicts the buckling
behavior of the plate eld suciently accurately for the purpose at hand.
3 See further Appendix C, Figs. C.8 and C.9, and adjoining text.
Figure 5.3: Buckling interaction curves for three dierent length over width ratios.
5.6.7 Plate Collapse

Determining the ultimate load for the plate eld entails rst the solution of the post-buckling
in-plane displacements which is done by running through the four steps previously established
(see page 69) and then applying the collapse criterion in Eq. (5.46) to determine the collapse
perturbation (loading) parameter "c.
Once the collapse loading parameter is known the corresponding collapse load can be estab-
lished in the form of stresses. More precise, the mean axial stress at collapse can be found
as

1 1 Z b/2
(2) (11)

ac = z;cr + t b b Nz + Nz dx "2c (5.53)
, /2 z = `/2
along with the mean shear stress at collapse found as

1 1 Z b/2
(2) (11)

sc = xz;cr + t b b Nxz + Nxz dx "2 (5.54)
, /2 z = `/ c
2
Figure 5.4: Collapse interaction curves for a square plate with three
dierent plate slenderness ratios.
(Experimental results adopted from Harding [19, Fig. 8.21]).
Applying this procedure to a square plate eld with three dierent slenderness ratios,
b=t = 60, 120, and 180 produces the interaction curves for the collapse stress shown in
Fig. 5.4 in comparison with experimental results from Harding [19]4. Actually, only the low-
est slenderness ratio of b=t = 60 is really of interest for typical ship structures. Signicantly
higher ratios, which indicates thinner plates, are uncommon in merchant ship structures,
mainly to avoid the possibility of elastic buckling of the plate elds, which is in essence the
consequence of selecting that low a slenderness of the plate, i.e. a relatively thick plate.
From the plot it seems fair to conclude that the present collapse criterion, based on the
transgression of the von Mises stress at one of the unloaded edges, yields a reasonably
accurate approximation to the experimental nding by Harding. Especially when considering
that the present collapse formulation is build on a second order perturbation expansion of
the plate behavior beyond the singular perturbation point at the critical buckling load.
Of further interest among the results derivable at plate collapse is the mean axial edge stress
at collapse obtainable as

Z `/2
ec = z;cr + 1t 1` ` Nz(2) + Nz(11) dz "2c (5.55)
, /2 x = b/ 2
4 See further Appendix C, Fig. C.10, and adjoining text.
This because it together with the mean axial stress at collapse ac expresses the eective
width of the plate in the post-buckling region up until collapse occurs.
The importance of this is due to the eective width principle being used to model the loss in
stiness the plate will experience after buckling. Similarly, the mean axial stress at collapse
ac will also, together with the yield stress of the stiener y,s, dene the eective width
applicable in the post-collapse region. Moreover, the mean shear stress at collapse sc is used
to dene the shear yield stress y of the plate (see Section 4.2.2). This is used to enforce the
assumed linear elastic, ideal plastic shear behavior of the total shear stress distribution of
the entire hull cross section, when scaled by Eq. (4.11) as described in Section 4.4.1.
5.6.8 Stress Assessment

The only task remaining before the elastic compressive load-displacement response can be
determined, is to nd the axial load corresponding to the occurrence of the dierent charac-
teristic stresses in the plate and in the extreme ber of the stiener.
This is done in exactly the same way as for the elastic tensile region, as the behavior still is
assumed linear elastic. Thus, for compressive loading (P > 0) the normal stress distribution
at the middle of the beam-column can be found as5
! 2
xx(z) = , A + sin( `/ ) `(P , P ) + 2P + ' , `2(PEPw
P Ez Pw 0 q` 0z
,
, PE) P
Eqz (5.56)
2 E
where
s
= P
EI
2
An elastic pre-buckling, buckling, and post-buckling analysis of the beam-column can then
be performed for which the assumed load-displacement response can be described by the
following three characteristic points:
1. Plate buckling: The fully eective beam-column will rst reach the limiting axial load
for buckling of the plate eld. That is, it is assumed that when the compressive stress
in the plate part of the beam-column reaches the critical level cr , then the stress in
the extreme ber of the stiener is still below compressive yielding.
5 See further Appendix B, Eq. (B.8).
2. Plate collapse: Beyond the critical load, the beam will be modeled with a reduced
eective width of the plate part, to describe the loss of stiness after buckling. The
width is reduced by the ratio between the mean edge and axial stress at collapse, i.e. by
ec =ac . Collapse of the plate eld is then taken to occur when the stress in the plate
reaches the mean edge stress at collapse ec for the eective beam-column. Thus, for
the real full eective beam-column the stress in the plate at collapse will actually be
the mean axial stress at collapse, i.e. ac . It is still assumed that the collapse stress will
be reached in the plate before the extreme ber of the stiener reaches yield capacity.
3. Total collapse: After the plate collapses, the nal point will be reaching the yield
capacity of the stiener. The eective width of the plate is reduced even further by
the ratio between the yield stress of the stiener and the mean axial stress at collapse,
i.e. by ac =y,s . Thus, a further loss of plate stiness is modeled such that when the
stress in the extreme ber of the stiener reaches yield capacity, the stress in the plate
for the full eective beam-column will remain equal to the mean axial stress at collapse.
The behavior of the beam-column for loading beyond this point will be assumed totally
plastic, and thus point three will mark the ending of the elastic compression range of the
beam-column response.
However, the concerns about the in uence of an initial out-of-plane de ection w0 of the
beam-column, and of the presence of a uniformly distributed load q, still remains as outlined
in the previous description of the elastic tensile behavior of the beam-column6. That is,
the possibility exist, that for certain combinations of w0 and q, the stress in the extreme
ber of the stiener may happen to reach its compressive yield capacity prior to any of the
characteristic loads for the plate part.
In this situation, it will be assumed that the yielding of the stiener will be the ultimate
response, based on the same argumentation as was the case in the tensile region. Namely,
that while probably being a somewhat conservative assumption, it is nevertheless the most
reasonable to make within the limitations of the present solution scheme.
5.7 Plastic Compression Region (Unloading)

In the plastic compression region the axial load of the beam-column decreases with increasing
displacement, leading to a negative slope of the stress-strain curve as shown in Fig. 5.1.
Hence, the beam-column is exhibiting its post-collapse behavior in this region of the load-
displacement response.
To describe the post-collapse behavior of structures, models based on plastic mechanisms
are commonly used. The fundamental assumption of the plastic mechanism concept is that
6 See Section 5.5, page 57.
5.7. Plastic Compression Region (Unloading) 77
Figure 5.5: Plastic hinge conguration.

the material behavior is rigid-plastic. That is, it is assumed that the material strain is zero
for stresses less than the yield stress. Further straining of the material is assumed to happen
at a constant stress level equal to the yield stress.
Moreover, the idea of using plastic mechanisms to describe the post-collapse behavior of
beam-columns has successfully been applied by e.g. Rutherford and Caldwell [42]. Based on
this, the concept of plastic mechanisms is chosen for application in the present procedure, by
assuming that three plastic hinges forms in the beam-column as shown in Fig. 5.5, i.e. one
in each end of the beam-column and one at the middle. Further, it is assumed that the cross
section of the beam-column initially is { and remains { prismatic.
The type of plastic mechanism used is then the probably most simple thinkable, namely just
the plastic moment of the total cross section about a horizontal axis in each hinge. More
elaborate mechanisms can be constructed as shown by e.g. Kierkegaard [23] and Murray
[30]. These take into account the actually observed folding mechanism occurring when the
beam-column is crushed in compression and thereby yields a much more accurate description
of the post-collapse behavior.
Consequently, these more sophisticated models will in general predict a more rapid unloading
of the beam-column compared to the currently proposed simple three-hinge model which
must be expected to be somewhat more rigid than the more advanced models. This might
be essential in obtaining a good description of the unloading response of the beam-column.
However, the simple model has the advantage of being very rapid to evaluate in a numerical
framework. Thus, even though the use of this model is an non-conservative approximation
to the real behavior, this simple approach will be used because of its better computational
performance.
Looking at a half model of the beam-column as shown in Fig. 5.6, and assuming uniform
yield stress y for the cross section, then the force equilibrium of the beam cross section is
easily found to be
Z a1 ZH
y ( )b( )d , y ( )b( )d = P (5.57)
0 a1
Z a2 ZH
y ( )b( )d , y ( )b( )d = ,P (5.58)
0 a2
Figure 5.6: Plastic hinge force and moment equilibrium.
which may be rewritten in a more convenient form using that

R a = R b + R a yielding
0 0 b
Z a1 ZH
2 y ( )b( )d , y ( )b( )d = P (5.59)
0 0
Z a2 ZH
2 y ( )b( )d , y ( )b( )d = ,P (5.60)
0 0
Thus, for a given axial force P the extent of both the compression and the tension zones
in the cross sections of the beam at each of the three plastic hinges, can be found from
Eqs. (5.59) and (5.60). That is, a1 and a2 are known parameters. Hence, the de ection of
the w at the middle of the beam can now be determined using moment equilibrium
9
M1 + M2 + 1/8 q`2 , wP = 0 ) w = M1 + MP2 + /8 q`
1 2 >
>
>
>
Z a1 ZH >
>
M1 = y ( )b( )d , y ( )b( )d >
=
0
Z a2
a
Z 1H > ;
M2 = y ( )b( )d , y ( )b( )d >
>
0 a >
>
ZH Z a22 >
>
P = y ( )b( )d , y ( )b( )d (Eq. (5.58)) ;
a2 0
5.7. Plastic Compression Region (Unloading) 79
Figure 5.7: Plastic displacement denition.

Z a1 ZH Z a2 ZH
y( )b( )d , y( )b( )d + y ( )b( )d , y ( )b( )d + 1/8 q`2
w= 0 a1 0 a2
ZH Z a2
y( )b( )d , 2 y( )b( )d
0 0
which can be rewritten as

Z a1 Z a2 ZH !
2 y ( )b( )d + y( )b( )d , y( )b( )d + 1/8 q`2
0
w= ZH 0 Z a2 0 (5.61)
y ( )b( )d , 2 y ( )b( )d
0 0
This is then the predicted de ection of the initially perfect beam-column. Included in this
solution is the eect of a uniformly distributed load q. Further, by reducing the eective
width of the plate part of the beam-column by the ratio between the mean edge stress at
collapse and the yield stress of the stiener, i.e. ec =y,s, then both the presence of shear
stress in the plate, and the collapse behavior of the same, is accounted for in the model.
That leaves only the initial out-of-plane de ection w0 to be accounted for.
In this context, the initial de ection is in fact the total de ection of the beam-column at
ultimate collapse, not to be confused with the assumed stiener imperfection w0 . Therefore,
associated with the initial elastic de ection w0;e there will be a corresponding initial elastic
end displacement 0;e. This give rise to the following problem: If the collapse load found
in the elastic collapse analysis is inserted rst in to Eqs. (5.59) and (5.60) and then into
Eq. (5.61), then an out-of-plane de ection wp,c is found which is general will be dierent
from the elastic de ection w0;e. However, the dierence will be small. Thus, to overcome
this problem the elastic de ection is regarded as an initial small out-of-plane de ection that
exists just before the unloading of the beam-column is initiated. Any further straining is
then considered to be totally plastic.
Under these assumptions the situation is as shown in Fig. 5.7 and the plastic contribution
to the axial displacement of the beam-column p can then be found from the total plastic
displacement wp (obtained by Eq. (5.61)) by applying the Pythagorean theorem yielding
0s s2 1
` 2
p(P ) = 2 @ , w02;e , ` , wp2 (P )A (5.62)
4 4
The total axial displacement in the plastic unloading region is then found by adding the
elastic displacement at collapse 0;e based on Eq. (5.3) with the plastic contribution just
found as p for a given post-collapse axial load P .
Thus, with the plastic response now established, the nal piece of the total load-displacement
response of the beam-column in combined loading has been established ranging from plastic
tensile response to post-ultimate, plastic compressive response.
5.8 Limitations of Method

In the course of establishing the idealized load-displacement behavior of a beam-column in
combined loading, a number of assumptions have proven necessary to make, to facilitate the
further development of the procedure and obtaining the nal model. Thus, having completed
this work as outlined in the previous sections of this chapter, it would be appropriate to recap
these assumptions for added clarity. The most important of these will be presented in the
following.
The presence of shear stresses in the plate part of the beam-column lead to the introduction
of a collapse criterion based on transgression of the plate yield stress by the von Mises stress.
In the tensile range of the response this was simply done based on the average shear stress
and the prescribed yield stress y,p such that the tensile yielding stress became
q 2
tc = y,p , 3 2 (5.63)
In the compressive range, a more elaborate scheme was deployed to describe collapse for the
plate eld. Here it was assumed the collapse happened when the mean von Mises stress v
at the mid-plane of the plate along one of the unloaded edges reached the prescribed yield
stress y,p . This criterion was veried against experimental results and concluded usable for
the present research.
In the post-ultimate compressive region is was further assumed that the behavior could be
modeled suciently accurate by a simple three-hinge plastic mechanism. And, in combina-
tion here with, the possibility of stiener tripping was ignored. Similarly in the post-ultimate
5.9. Implementation Notes 81
tensile region, the possibility of necking of the stiener was ignored, as it was assumed that
total collapse of the entire hull cross section would occur before necking initiated in any of
the beam-columns.
Moreover, in the linear part of the response is was assumed that the ultimate loading capacity
in both tensile and compressive loading, was either when the extreme ber of the stiener,
or when the plate, reach its maximum capacity, which ever occurs at the lowest load level.
This, no matter what the remaining load carrying capacity of the non-failed component was.
This assumption was chie y made necessary by the possibility of bending moment in the
beam-column, caused by the presence of a uniformly distributed loading. It is noted, that
this is a slightly conservative assumption.
Finally, it was made necessary to assume linear behavior in the immediate vicinity of zero
axial load, i.e. around P = 0. More accurately, it was assumed that there must exist a
negative (tensile) load for which nonlinear eects in neither the plate, nor the stiener, has
onset. Likewise, there must exist a positive (compressive) load fullling the same require-
ment, i.e. linear behavior of both plate and stiener. If this is not the case, the developed
procedure cannot describe the behavior7.
5.9 Implementation Notes

The implementation of this procedure in a computer code is a straight forward process.
However, a few points concerning how this was done, will be presented in the following.
First of all, the load-displacement curves are to be used by the overlying code performing
the overall system analysis of the entire hull cross section. Thus, the task we actually want
the code to perform can be specied as:
Given a forced rotation of the strain-plane, and further for each i th beam-
column, a constant shear stress i , an initial uniformly distributed load qi, and
an initial de ection w0;i { Then build the corresponding load-displacement curve
for each of the beam-columns.
The solution for the critical and collapse behavior of the plate is independent of all but one
of these parameters, namely the shear stress i. Thus, it will be possible to solve the plate
problem only for a discrete set of shear stress and axial stress combinations, and the use
and interpolation scheme based on those discrete values to obtain the plate results for any
load combination. The actual number of discrete values needed for a suciently accurate
description will of course depend highly on how smooth the function will be. This is all
discussed in detail in the Summary section of Appendix C. As the plate problem is solved
7 See further the discussion of the beam-column stress solution at the end of Appendix B.
using the nite dierence approach, it is by far the most time consuming part of the code.
Thus, it will be highly benecial for the performance on the code, if this scheme is adopted.
With this done, the remaining work to be carried out can be divided into two tasks. One,
establish the linear elastic part of the response, and two build the post-ultimate compressive
response by means of the plastic hinge mechanism. Regarding the later, then this is quite
simple and thus mandates no further attention. However, with respect to the linear elastic
part a few comments should be made.
The key interest in this region of the response is the establishment of the following ve
load-displacements (,P ) points:
1. Tensile yielding of the entire

beam-column.
2. Tensile yielding of the stiener.
3. Buckling of the plate.
4. Compressive collapse of the plate.
5. Compressive collapse of the entire
beam-column.
as illustrated graphically to the right. In this order these points will make up the response
from tensile failure to compressive collapse, where the plastic hinge solution will take over
the description. Each of these points are in fact described by two parameters, namely the
stress in the mid-plane of the plate and in the extreme ber of the stiener. As it is very
unlikely, that both these stresses will be produced by the same axial load, the assumption
is that it is the lowest of the two forces that describes the response. Hence, one approach
would be to solve for both these forces one-by-one, and then select the lowest.
This will however not be the most ecient approach, as one may end up in the situation
where the rst found force turns out to be the smallest, and thus the resources used to nd
the second force was kind of wasted. An alternative scheme has therefore been successfully
implemented in the present code. It involves the generation of a sort of safety index function.
Assuming that the target stress in the plate is within the range [plow; phigh] and in the stiener
[slow ; shigh], then this safety index function (P ) is dened as
8 high
< , p(P ) for p (P ) > 0
p(P ) = : p
p (P ) , plow for p (P ) 0
(P ) = min [ p(P ); s(P )] where 8 high
< , s(P ) for s(P ) > 0
s(P ) = : s
s (P ) , slow for s(P ) 0
5.10. Test Application of the Procedure 83
This function will have the property, that a positive value will imply that the stress in
the plate and in the stiener, both are within the ranges specied. A negative value will
indicated that one of these stresses is out of bounds, and nally a zero value will be the same
as one of the stresses exactly is equal to one of the four bounds.
This can be utilized in the following way. Say the object is to nd the axial load at buckling
of the plate (i.e. the third point). Then the limit for the stresses will be dened by the
buckling stress cr for the plate and the yield stress y,s for the stiener. The axial response
sought is then dened as the load where the stress in the plate within the range [tc ; cr],
i.e. higher than the stress causing tensile yielding and lower than the buckling stress. For the
stiener the stress range simply becomes [,y,s ; y,s], i.e. within the yielding stress. Then,
by solving for a positive root (positive because of compression) in the safety index function,
the axial force obtained will inherently be the lowest giving either cr in the plate, or y,s in
the stiener.
This approach has proven not only very fast, but also very robust. Thus, this is the procedure
implemented and used to identify the ve points in the elastic part of the response in the
present code. An alternative procedure based on the full numerical solution to the dierential
equation governing the beam-column has been tested as outlined in Appendix D. However,
this approach was deemed in vain due to numerical problems and overall slow performance.
This procedure has therefore been abandoned as unusable within the context of the present
research.
In relation to the elastic part of the load-de ection response, the possible problem of nonlin-
ear behavior in the immediate vicinity of zero axial load which was explained previously, is in
the present code tackled by simply ignoring the beam-column. That is, if the beam-column
is in an unsafe condition when it is unloaded with respect to axial force, it is in essence
considered to be ineective in the total hull cross section.
The nal comment to be made is pertaining to the nite dierence solution used to obtain
the descriptive stresses for the plate part of the beam-column8. The procedure requires
the repeated solution of large matrix system. These are however very sparse in the present
formulation, thus a solver utilizing this property will be advantageous to use. Further, as
a lot of the beam-columns in a typical hull cross section will be identical, checking for this
and only solving once for each distinct plate also improves the performance of the code
signicantly.
5.10 Test Application of the Procedure

To test the implementation of the procedure a test beam-column has been analyzed. The
dimensions of the beam-column is shown in Fig. 5.8, along with the results for dierent levels
8 A detailed description of all the aspect of implementation of this procedure is presented in Appendix C.
Figure 5.8: Load-displacement curves demonstrating the eect of shear stress.

of shear stress . The shear stresses range from zero to total yield shear stress y in steps of
ten percent, giving a total of eleven investigated levels. Of these the zero shear stress, the
fty percent of yield, and the total yield shear stress has been highlighted.
The material properties for the beam-column is a Young's modulus E of 207 GPa and a
Poisson's ratio of 0:3. The yield stress for the plate and the stiener is identical being
359 MPa. Further, the beam-column is assumed without any initial imperfection, i.e. w0 = 0,
and the end rotation ' of the beam-column was set to zero. Finally, no uniformly distributed
loading q was applied to the beam-column.
Hence, the result presented in Fig. 5.8 is for an ideal beam-column. From the graphs it is
observed how the increasing presence of shear stresses in the plate reduces the axial load
carrying capacity of the beam-column, just as expected (see e.g. similar results published by
Melchior Hansen [17]). Further, it is noted that the behavior when the plate is exposed to
5.11. Beam-Columns without Stieners 85
yield shear stress y is that of the stiener alone, which is the expected behavior as shear
stresses only aect the plate part of the beam-column.
The eect of end rotation and initial de ection of the beam-column has also been investigated
for this test case. It was found that the behavior also here was as expected. That is, the
introduction of an initial out-of-plane de ection whether caused by an initial imperfection
or an end rotation of the beam-column, causes a reduction in the load-carrying capacity of
the beam-column, though comparatively small with respect to the ideal behavior. Moreover,
the presence of a uniformly distributed load on the beam-column has been tested. Here,
the behavior again was in compliance with the expectation, being a reduction in the load
carrying capacity of the beam-column. However, a graphical presentation of the changes in
the load-displacement curves due to these deviation from the ideal behavior has been left
out, as the comparatively small changes made distinction of the dierent curves at best very
hard when keeping the loads and the stiener imperfection within reasonable ranges.
5.11 Beam-Columns without Stieners

The overall analysis method has so far been derived under the assumption that the entire
hull cross section could be represented as a number of discrete beam-columns, each consisting
of a stiener and the attach plating. However, the presence of plate elds in the form of
stringers in the side and girders in the bottom, which are unstiened in the longitudinal
direction or with light secondary stiening, are not uncommon in typical hull structures.
Although these members constitutes only a small fraction (a few percent or so) of the total
longitudinal strength, it will nevertheless be preferable if the present method could account
for this.
For a plate alone, the elastic response from tensile yielding to compressive collapse can easily
be established by application of the previously derived results. Further, continuing along
the same path as used previously, the tensile post-ultimate behavior can be assumed ideal
plastic. Thus, only the post-ultimate compressive response needs to be reconsidered when
the beam-column consists only of one plate. Here, the problem is that without a stiener,
the collapse mechanism of the plate cannot reasonably be represented by the three-hinge
mechanism used previously.
5.11.1 Overall Buckling Mechanism

To address this problem a new plastic mechanism based on the beam-column acting as a plate
rather than a beam has been introduced. The mechanism is based on an assumed overall
buckling mode of the plate as illustrated in Fig. 5.9. That is, an adoption of the classical
plastic yield-line model for a laterally loaded plate eld, with the eect of an in-plane axial
loading incorporated.
Figure 5.9: Overall buckling mechanism.
For this mechanism the internal work by the plastic moment Mp = y t2=4, corresponding to
an end displacement is
Z
V i = 2Mpb1 + 2Mp(` , , b tan )2 + 4(Mp `DE sin 2 + Mp `DE cos 1 ) + "ydV
V
!
= 4Mpw 2 ` ,
+
b + /2tby (5.64)
1
tan
where the geometrical relations yields the two angle as 1 = 2w/b tan and 2p= 2w/b. Further,
the length between point D and E is `DE = b/2 cos and the de ection is w = 2 + b tan .
The external work by the axial load P and the lateral load q becomes

V e = q (` , , b tan )b w2 + b2 w3 tan + P
= qwb (3(` , ) , b tan ) + P (5.65)
6
Requiring equilibrium between the internal and external work then leads to the following
relation between the axial load P and the end displacement for a given angel
s ( ! )
b 2 ` , 1 qb
P (; ) = 1 , tan 4Mp tan + b + 2 tby , 6 (3(` , ) , b tan ) (5.66)
Figure 5.10: Straight edge folding mechanism.

As this is an upper bound solution, the response force P corresponding to an end displace-
ment is obtained by minimizing the expression with respect to the angle . Doing this
analytically resolves in a third order equation in tan in which one of the roots will be the
right solution. However, solving for the roots analytically in this third order equation is quite
tedious, why in the present formulation, the minimization of Eq. (5.66) will be done numer-
ically. Thus, the post-ultimate compressive load-displacement behavior can be estimated by
the use of Eq. (5.66).
This post-collapse model of overall buckling is justiable for plates which are heavily laterally
loaded. However, if the lateral loading is moderate or non-existing, then overall buckling will
not be the expected response of the plate eld in the post-ultimate region. Especially not,
as the in-plane straining of the plate is ignored in the present formulation. A local straight
edge (multiple) folding mechanism like the one illustrated in Fig. 5.10 will be more in line
with the expected behavior. Thus, to assess the validity of the overall buckling model, also
this local folding mechanism will be investigated.
5.11.2 Local Folding Mechanism

The geometry of the straight edge folding mechanism is shown in Fig. 5.10 for an axially
loaded plate. Following Kierkegaard [23] the rate of internal energy dissipation for half the
width c = b/2 of this mechanism is,
E_ i = ytkH 2 ("_eI + "_eII ) (5.67)
where "_eI and "_eII are the eective strain rates in the the two triangular regions at the end
of the fold (see Fig. 5.10), given as
"_eI = ssin 2
_ and "
_ eII = p2 sin _
p 2 2 3
k 3 1 , 4cos
k +1
2
The external energy dissipation caused by the end displacement alone then simply becomes
E_ e = P _ where the end displacement relates to the folding angle as = 2H (1 , cos )
giving
E_ e = 2PH sin _ (5.68)
The height H of half the fold is dependent on the plastic moment Mp = y t2=4 and the
squash load Ny = y t. Further, the factor k dening the length kH is found by minimizing
the rate of internal energy dissipation at an early stage of collapse, i.e. for = 0, leading to
k = 0:5733. Thus the height H becomes
v
u p sp
u
H = t 3NMk pc = 83tb
k
y
Requiring equilibrium between the rate of internal and external energy dissipation (E_ i = E_ e)
then leads to the following relation between the axial load P and the folding angle for the
full width b of the plate
P () = y tkHsin
("_eI + "_eII)
(5.69)
from which the load-displacement behavior can be obtained using the relation between the
end displacement and the folding angle, i.e. = arccos (1 , /2H ). Moreover, the mean
crushing force Pm can be found by integration over the entire folding process giving
0s 1
Pm = p2 Ny H @ k2 + 14 arcsin p 12 + kA (5.70)
3 4k + 1
These last two expressions (Eqs. (5.69) and (5.70)) can thus be used in comparison with the
overall buckling model (Eq. (5.66)) to test the performance of the later with respect to pure
axial loading on the unstiened plate eld.
Figure 5.11: Compressive load-displacement behavior of a stringer

without lateral loading.
5.11.3 Comparison
This comparison has been done for a test plate of typical dimensions, and the results are
shown in Fig. 5.11 in the form of load-displacement curves. The length and width of the test
plate are ` = 1:0 m and b = 0:3 m respectively, and the thickness of the plate is t = 6 mm.
The material parameters for the plate are a yield stress of y = 359 MPa, a Young's modulus
E = 207 GPa, and Poisson's ratio = 0:3.
With these scantlings, the theoretical compressive length of one fold becomes 2H = 0:092 m,
which also is observed in Fig. 5.11 to be the length of each of the repeated patterns of
unloading indicating multiple folds. Of course, this length is higher than what will be the
real length, as the thickness of the plate is not accounted for in this approximation. In the
literature this discrepancy is normally handled by introducing an eective folding length in
the range of sixty to seventy percent of the theoretical value, and then redistributing the
energy spend in one fold over that length.
Nevertheless, for the purpose of comparison, this hardly makes no dierence, as the interest
here is more on the mean crushing force Pm, than on the repeated pattern of unloading caused
by the multiple fold collapse of the plate. Also, it is noted that the transition from one to two
folds in the post-collapse response occurs at a signicant level of straining (approximately
nine percent), at which collapse of the entire hull cross section will at least be eminent if not
already surpassed, for typical hull structures.
Therefore, observing in Fig. 5.11 the load-displacement curve resulting from the overall
buckling approach in comparison with the mean crushing force as predicted by Eq. (5.70),
with special emphasis on the response within the moderate straining range, a good correlation
is found. Granted, the unloading of the overall buckling model is not as rapid as that of the
straight edge folding mechanism. However, the response predicted by the overall buckling
model has the, for the present scope, advantage over the straight edge folding mechanism in
being at least one time dierentiable, i.e. C1 , and further yields a smooth unloading from
the collapse load of the plate led. These two features are important for the interpolation
scheme applied in the overall system analysis of the entire hull. Therefore, as the correlation
between the two solution methods is reasonably, it has been decided to use the overall
buckling approach in the present procedure. The implementation then follows the exact
same path as for the full beam-column, i.e. one having both a plate and a stiener part,
with the elastic end displacement taken as an initial small displacement.
Finally, it is noted that because of the ignored contribution from the in-plane straining in
the overall buckling mechanism, the load-displacement response predicted by this mecha-
nism falls below the mean crushing force Pm given by the straight edge folding mechanism.
However, this occurs after excessive straining of the plate and is therefore insignicant in
the scope of the present investigation for reasons already described.
5.12 Summary
A procedure for establishing the load-displacement response of a beam-column exposed to
and axial force P , an end rotation ', a constant shear stress level in the plate part only,
and a uniformly distributed load q acting only on the stiener perpendicular to the plate
eld, has been established. The procedure further allows for an initial imperfection w0 of
the stiener only. Out-of-plane loading of the plate part is ignored as is initial out-of-plane
de ection of the plate. The beam-column can either be made up of both a plate and a
stiener, or it can be only a plate without any stiener.
The plate part of the beam-column has been model by a nite dierence solution to the von
Karman equations, and the result obtain hereby has been compared with known result for
classic plate elds showing perfect accordance. Moreover, collapse of the plate part of the
5.12. Summary 91
beam-column has been based on the von Mises stress as the limiting capacity of the plate.
The use of this approach has also been successfully veried against available experiment.
Finally, the response from tensile yielding to compressive collapse of the entire beam-column,
has been modeled by a linear elastic solution to the classical beam-column problem, modied
by application of the eective width concept for the plate part. The response beyond tensile
yielding has been assumed ideal plastic, whereas in the compressive post-collapse range
a simple three-hinge plastic mechanism has been applied in the case of a beam-column
consisting of both a plate and a stiener. If the beam-column is made up only of a plate,
i.e. no stiener, then the compressive post-collapse range is modeled by a plastic yield-line
mechanism based on an assumed overall buckling mode of the plate eld. The validity of
this last approach has been veried against a true compressive folding mechanism, where
good agreement was obtained.
The procedure has then been applied to a test beam-column, the results of which has instilled
condence in its accuracy and performance.

Chapter 6
Verication of the Procedure
6.1 Introduction
In the previous two chapters a procedure for the evaluation of the ultimate and post-ultimate
capacity of a hull cross section has been established. During this derivation, the dierent
parts, which together makes up the entire procedure, was tested and veried. Thus, with
the complete analysis procedure readily available, it is possible to continue the verication
process by applying the procedure to test cases for which results are known. Either in form
of experiments or as theoretical solutions by other methods.
Two test cases has been selected for use in this verication process. The rst is one of the so
called Nishihara box girders investigated by Nishihara [31]. The second test case is a double
hull tanker structure analyzed by Melchior Hansen [17]. In the following these two cases
will both be analyzed by the present procedure and the hereby obtained results will then be
compared with results published by the two authors mentioned above.
6.2 Nishihara Box Girders

Nishihara [31] performed a number of experiments to obtain the ultimate moment capacity
for four dierent ship-like cross sections. Each of these was build to simulate the typical
conventional ship types, being tankers, bulk carriers, and container carriers as shown in
Fig. 6.1. Of these, especially the rst one simulating a single skin tanker is interesting in
the present study because it is a double symmetric cross section. Hence, bending about the
horizontal axis will be identical to bending about the vertical axis. Further, there should be
no dierence between the ultimate hogging and sagging capacity of the cross section. These
properties rarely exist in real ship structures, but for the purpose of testing the asymmetrical
forced curvature principle used in the present formulation, they are very convenient to have.
93
94 Chapter 6. Verication of the Procedure
Figure 6.1: Nishihara test cross sections.
Moreover, nonlinear nite element calculations on this test section have been published by
Melchior Hansen [17] along with results from a beam-column analysis somewhat similar
to the present procedure. All this, makes the Nishihara box girder an excellent and well
documented test case to benchmark the present procedure against.
6.2.1 Model description

The geometry of the cross section for the box girder simulating a single skin tanker is shown in
Fig. 6.2. Further, Tab. 6.1 lists the geometric and material parameters for the cross section.
The loading on the cross section was, in the experiments performed by Nishihara, pure
bending. No information about the initial imperfections in the cross section was reported in
[31]. Nevertheless, this information was needed by Melchior Hansen [17] to verify a beam-
column method developed specically for the longitudinal strength of hull girders. Thus, to
side-step this problem, Melchior Hansen performed a total of four nonlinear nite element
calculations. Each of these with a well dened initial imperfection being:
1. Only plate imperfection in the shape of two half sine waves between the frames, and
one half sine wave between the stieners. The magnitude of the plate de ection was
half the thickness of the plate, i.e. 1:5 mm.
2. Plate and stiener imperfection, but only in the compressed deck panel. The shape
was one half sine wave both between the frames, and between the sides of the cross
section. The magnitude of the imperfection at the middle of the deck panel was set to
2`=300 = 6 mm outwards from the center of the cross section.
3. Same overall plate and stiener imperfection as above, only changed in direction to
inwards to the center of the cross section.
4. Same as the rst model (i.e. only plate imperfection, but in the entire structure), but
with a residual stress R of magnitude R =y = 0:50 imposed on the plating.
6.2. Nishihara Box Girders 95
Table 6.1: Sectional parameters for the single skin tanker box girder.
Plate thickness (overall) : 0.003 m
Young's modulus : 207 GPa
Yield stress : 288 MPa
Sectional area : 9.96010 m2
, 3
Sectional modulus : 2.37910,3 m3
Moment of inertia : 0.85610,3 m4
Position of elastic neutral axis : 0.360 m
Elastic moment (rst yield) : 685 kNm
Position of plastic neutral axis : 0.360 m
Plastic moment : 787 kNm
Figure 6.2: Cross section (top) and beam-column model (bottom)

of the single skin tanker box girder.
Table 6.2: Ultimate moment capacity for the Nishihara box girder.
(Adopted from Melchior Hansen [17]).
ID Imperfection Moment capacity [kNm]
# identication Finite element Beam-column
1 Plate imperfections 525 560
2 Stiener imperfections inwards 583 530
3 Stiener imperfections outwards 525 530
4 Residual stresses 520 535
The moment capacities hereby obtained for pure bending, both from the nite element
analyzes and the corresponding beam-column solution are listed in Tab. 6.2. Of these, case
one and four are of no interest for the current project, as the procedure developed cannot
handle plate imperfections, neither geometrical nor residual stresses. However, as stiener
imperfections are accounted for in the current procedure, it can approximate the imperfection
imposed to the box structure in analysis cases two and three.
6.2.2 Collapse Analyzes

Two dierent types of investigations have been performed for the Nishihara box girder. First,
a total of three solutions for the ultimate moment capacity in pure bending about a horizontal
axis have been obtained using the present procedure. One of these solutions were obtained
without any initial imperfection in the structure, i.e. for a initially perfect condition of the
box girder. The remaining two solutions were derived with initial stiener imperfections
identical to the modes imposed in nite element model two and three by Melchior Hansen
[17]. The motivation for performing these three investigations has been to verify the present
procedures ability to accurately predict the ultimate moment capacity. Hence, the eects of
shear stresses and asymmetrical bending has been ignored, and the focus has been set solely
on the moment capacity in pure bending.
The second type of investigations addresses one of these eects previously ignored, namely
the asymmetrical bending of the box girder. Here, the focus is on verication of the procedure
to handle this asymmetrical bending, more than on the hereby obtained moment capacities.
This, because there is no other data for asymmetrical bending found to compare with.
Nevertheless, the present box girder has the, for the present investigations very appropriate,
property of being symmetrical about not only a horizontal axis, but also about a vertical
axis. Hence, the moment-curvature response will be identical for any two axes which are
orthogonal, e.g. the vertical and horizontal global axes. This will be used to verify the
procedure.
Figure 6.3: Moment-curvature relations for the Nishihara box girder.

(Comparative results adopted from Nishihara [31] and Melchior Hansen [17]).
Pure Bending Analyzes
The results obtained from the pure bending investigations are shown in Fig. 6.3 in the form
of moment-curvature response curves. The curves are based on very small increments in the
curvature to insure a smooth and accurate representation. Further, the ultimate capacities
found by the present procedure are listed in the gure for both hogging and sagging. Also,
the corresponding result from both Nishihara [31] and Melchior Hansen [17] are listed.
Regarding these results, then neither author distinguish between hogging and sagging in
there listed results. For Nishihara this is understandable as the model used was symmetric
about the horizontal axis, and thus there is no dierence between the hogging and sagging
capacity. However, for the two models used by Melchior Hansen the imposed imperfections
were only present in the deck part of the structure. Consequently, there will be a dierence
between hogging and sagging moments, as the result obtained by the present procedure also
clearly shows. Nevertheless, no distinction was made in [17].
Table 6.3: Calculated ultimate moment capacity for the Nishihara box girder.
Calculation Moment capacity [kNm]
Identication Mhog Msag FEM [17] Beam [17]
Experimental data [31] 576 -576 { {
Present: Initially perfect structure 572 -572 { {
Present: Deck stieners inwards 573 -608 583 530
Present: Deck stieners outwards 534 -529 525 530
Observing the response curves in Fig. 6.3 the rst observation to be made is how the post-
ultimate response clearly shows the trace of the one-by-one collapse of the three beam-
columns making up each side of the box girder cross section. The collapse behavior of
the entire cross section is initiated when the deck or bottom reaches their ultimate capacity.
Unloading then sets in, with a signicant drop in response each time one of the three vertical
beam-columns reaches its ultimate capacity. This behavior is in accordance with the expected
response of the box girder.
Regarding the ultimate moment capacities as predicted by the present procedure, then these
are listed in Tab. 6.3 together with comparative results from [31] and [17]. To recap, the
three models investigated are: One, initially ideal, i.e. with no imperfections. Two, stiener
imperfection in the deck structure only with the shape on one half sine wave and magnitude
equal to 2`=300 = 6 mm inwards to the center of the cross section. Three, identical to two,
but with the stiener imperfection being outwards from the center of the cross section.
From the previous Tab. 6.1 the elastic (rst yield) and plastic moments for the box girder was
determined to be 685 kNm and 787 kNm respectively. Thus, the rst observation which can
be made is that all of the predicted moment capacities is below not only the plastic moment,
but also below the elastic moment. This is atypical of ship structure where the ultimate
moment capacity normally is found to be above the rst yield moment, and below the
plastic moment. Nevertheless, comparing the capacities obtained by the present procedure
with both the experimental data from [31] and with the nonlinear nite element results
from [17], it is seen that a very satisfactory correlation is achieved. Thus, the less than rst
yield moment capacity of the box girder is attributed to the thin plates in the scale model
compared to the cross sections dimensions.
Finally, it is noted that the present procedure not only yields a very good correlation with
the nonlinear nite element results from [17] (less than ve percent deviation is achieved),
but also produces a comparatively better result than the beam-column procedure reported
in [17]. This even though the present procedure in its formulation is closely related to
the procedure used by Melchior Hansen in [17]. This is attributed to a more stringent
and thorough inclusion primary of the nite dierence description for the plating, but also
improvements in the procedure used to establish the entire load-displacement response of
the individual beam-columns compared with the approach used in [17].
Figure 6.4: Moment-curvature relations for the Nishihara box girder at

dierent orientations of the instantaneous neutral axis.
Asymmetrical Bending Investigation
The second investigation aims at verifying the the present procedures ability to describe
asymmetrical bending of the hull cross section. The results hereby obtained are shown
in Fig. 6.4 as moment-curvature response curves for four dierent orientations of the
instantaneous neutral axis (INA). These being 0o (horizontal), 45o, 90o (vertical), and 135o,
as also shown in the gure. As stated previously, the emphasis in this investigation is not on
the the moment capacity, but rather on the moment-curvature response, as this will show if
the symmetry of the box girder is re ected also in the predictions of the present procedure.
Following the double symmetric property of the box girder cross section, the moment-
curvature response will be identical for any two axes which are orthogonal. This explains
the selected orientations of the instantaneous neutral axis previously listed. Of these, 0o
and 90o should yield identical moment-curvature response, and likewise 45o and 135o, must
be expected to predict the same response.
Regarding the later, looking at the response curves in Fig. 6.4 is it seen that the present
method indeed yields the same result for equal to 45o and 135o. However, with respect to
the horizontal and vertical orientations of the instantaneous neutral axis ( equal to 0o and
90o) a small discrepancy is observed in the two predicted moment-curvature curves. The
explanation for this dierence is to be found in the way the real box girder cross section is
idealized as beam-columns.
One of the limitations of the present procedure is that it can only handle beam-columns
made up of a plate part and a stiener part in a T-prole shape with the stiener assumed
to be positioned at the middle of the plate part. Thus, the four corners of the box girder,
which really are sort of V-prole beam-columns, are in the idealized representation given as
what becomes a T-prole beam-column (see sketch in Fig. 6.4 or Fig. 6.2). Consequently,
the idealized cross section of the box girder is not the same with respect to bending about
a horizontal and vertical axis respectively. It is, however, the same for bending about axes
at 45o and 135o which explains why these results are the same as shown in Fig. 6.4.
A ctitious cross section without the four corner beam-columns has therefore been analyzed
by the present procedure to verify the explanation made. For this cross section bending
about a horizontal and vertical axis yields the same result. The conclusion is therefore, that
the present procedure is capable of accurately handling and describing asymmetrical bending
of a hull cross section.
6.2.3 Discussion of the Results

To summarize on the results obtained by analyzing the Nishihara box girder, two conclusions
can be made. First, the ability of the present procedure to accurately predict the ultimate
moment capacity is convincing. Secondly, the present procedure can handle asymmetrical
bending of the cross section. Moreover, the predicted moment-curvature response ts accu-
rately with the expected post-ultimate behavior of structure, which promotes condence in
the idealized beam-column description implemented in the present procedure.
Thus, the verication of the asymmetrical bending prediction by the present procedure is
concluded, leaving only the eects of shear stresses in the structure to be veried. This will
be addressed in the following.
6.3. Double Hull Tanker 101
6.3 Double Hull Tanker
The eect of shear stresses on the ultimate moment capacity was investigated by Melchior
Hansen [17] for a typical double hull tanker of some 30.000 dead-weight-tons. The loading
applied was a combination of bending moment about a horizontal axis, and a vertical shear
force. For this loading, results are presented in [17] both as moment-curvature responses
at dierent levels of shear, and as ultimate capacity interactions charts, i.e. the ultimate
hogging and sagging moment as a function of the shear force. Further, two conditions of
the structure was studied. One, where the scantling of the cross section was equal to the
as-build tanker and one where a severe state of corrosion was imposed on the plating through
reduced thicknesses by two-thirds at dierent locations such that the section modulus of the
corroded cross section equals ninety percent of the minimum requirement prescribed by the
International Association of Classication Societies [21].
For the purpose of verication, these results will be established by application of the present
procedure, and then compared with the ndings published in [17]. The scope of the in-
vestigation will therefore be limited to only those conditions reported in [17] to allow for a
comparison. That is, only shear caused by a vertical shear force and bending about a hori-
zontal axis will be investigated. Moreover, only the original, as-build condition of the tanker
will be investigated. This because the purpose at hand is verication of the present proce-
dure only { not a parameter study as reported in [17]. However, on the topic of corrosion it
should be mentioned that including this simply as a uniform reduction of the plate thickness
as done in [17] may lead to an overestimated ultimate capacity. Resent ndings published
by Mateus and Witz [28] indicates that using a quasi-random thickness surface model, as
opposed to the traditional uniform thickness reduction, shows a signicant discrepancy (as
high as eight percent) between the ultimate capacity predicted by the two methods. The
conclusion in [28] is that the uniform thickness reduction produces optimistic results and
is therefore arguably inadequate for design purposes. Although the present procedure aims
more at being a emergency response tool than a design tool, it may still be important to
thoroughly consider the modeling of corrosion, to obtain realistic ultimate capacities.
6.3.1 Model Description

The geometry of the midship section for the double hull tanker is shown in Fig. 6.5. Further,
a list of the principal dimensions for the vessel along with the sectional parameters for the
midship section is given is Tab. 6.4. Regarding the existence of imperfections in the cross
section, then [17] oers no description of any geometric imperfection. However, detailed
inspection of the background material for the tanker model, made available to the author
by Melchior Hansen, revealed the imperfections applied to the model in [17] to be an initial
stiener de ection of `/200 = 0:02 m where ` is the frame spacing, i.e. the length of the
individual beam-columns in the idealized hull cross section.
Table 6.4: Principal dimensions and sectional parameters for the double hull tanker.
Principal Dimensions:
Length between perpendiculars Lpp : 168.56 m
Length overall Loa : 172.56 m
Breadth B : 28.00 m
Depth D : 14.90 m
Draught T : 10.90 m
Displacement r : 42500 m3
Frame spacing amid ship ` : 3.925 m
Sectional area A : 2.80 m2
Sectional Parameters:
Moment of inertia Iyy : 101.18 m4
Elastic neutral axis ENA : 6.41 m
Plastic neutral axis PNA : 4.13 m
First yield moment My : 2.92 GNm
Plastic moment Mp : 4.64 GNm
Section modulus (deck) Wdeck : 110.13 m3
Section modulus (keel) Wkeel : 157.79 m3
Figure 6.5: Midship section of the double hull tanker.

The tanker is made with the use of high tensile steel (HTS) for the longitudinals and the
inner skin of the double hull, whereas almost all of the outer plating is normal mild steel.
The yield stress for the two types of steels are 353 MPa and 265 MPa respectively. Thus, as
the yield stress of the stiener is higher than, or equal to, the yield stress of the plate, the
tanker fullls the assumption made by the present procedure, allowing application without
any further concerns.
6.3.2 Combined Loading Analyzes

For this tanker, Melchior Hansen [17] performed an analysis with combined loading consisting
of bending moment about the horizontal axis, and vertical shear force. This was done for only
half of the midship section as the method used in [17] relies on symmetry of the cross section.
The eect of the vertical shear force was in the analysis approximated by an assumed shear
stresses distribution were the shear stress along the height of the cross section was constant
and along the width varying linearly from zero at the center to the constant magnitude at
the side. The magnitude of this approximate shear stresses distribution at the side of the
cross section was then found by equating it to the resulting vertical shear force. Regarding
the accuracy of this approximation, then referring back to the previously shown shear stress
distributions caused by a unit loading on a typical hull cross section (Fig. 4.3), it can be
concluded that this assumed shear stress distribution is not a bad approximation to the real
behavior for the present vessel. The results hereby obtained, i.e. for half of the cross section,
are in [17] listed as an ultimate shear force capacity of 81:1 MN, and the ultimate moment
capacities 2:03 GNm in hogging and 1:63 GNm in sagging equivalent to approximately 87%
and 70% of the plastic moment respectively.
The same vessel has been analyzed by application of the present procedure which applies
the true shear stress distribution and the ultimate capacities hereby obtained are listed in
Tab. 6.5 for shear force and moment. Also listed in the table are the longitudinal strength
parameters, i.e. the rst yield moment and the plastic moment of the cross section with
respect to bending about a horizontal axis. Moreover, a graphical presentation of the pre-
dicted moment-curvature response for eleven dierent levels of shear, ranging from non to
Table 6.5: Predicted ultimate capacities for the double hull tanker.
Longitudinal Strength:
First yield moment : 2.92 GNm
Plastic moment : 4.64 GNm
Predicted Ultimate Capacities:
Vertical shear force capacity : 169 MN
Bending moment capacity { hogging : 3.94 GNm ' 85% of plastic moment
Bending moment capacity { sagging : -3.11 GNm ' 67% of plastic moment
Figure 6.6: Moment-curvature response for the double hull tanker.
ultimate shear capacity, is shown in Fig. 6.6, and nally the predicted interaction between
the vertical shear force and the ultimate bending moment capacity in both hogging and
sagging condition is shown in Fig. 6.7.
6.3.3 Discussion of the Results

Observing the moment-curvature responses shown in Fig. 6.6 it is noted how the predicted
unloading of the cross section becomes less pronounced with higher levels of shear loading.
The explanation for this behavior lies within the assumed three-hinge plastic mechanism
used to model the post-ultimate response of the individual beam-columns (see Section 5.7).
As the level of shear loading increases the eectiveness of the plate with respect to direct
loading rapidly decrease and hereby the beam-column becomes more and more just a stiener
without any attached plating which makes the response predicted by the assumed plastic
mechanism somewhat dubious for these high levels of shear. In general, the three-hinge
Figure 6.7: Moment-shear interaction chart for the double hull tanker.
plastic mechanism will for high levels of shear predict a very slow unloading as shown in
Fig. 5.8. However, for beam-columns with very high stieners the unloading predicted will be
almost ideal-plastic in the sense that after the ultimate capacity of the beam-column has been
reached, excessive straining is required before any signicant unloading is achieved. This,
not to mention the ignored eect of tripping which also becomes increasingly signicant for
high stieners, is an expected short-coming of the assumed method, and therefore must be
expected to manifest it self in the moment-curvature response as shown in Fig. 6.6. Although
hard to see from the graphs, a maximum for the hogging bending moment is actually achieved
at a curvature roughly equal to 0:0006 m,1 for the 90% and full shear capacity response.
Hence, the present procedure manages to capture the ultimate capacity of the entire loading
range from zero to ultimate shear capacity as also shown in the moment-shear interaction
chart presented in Fig. 6.7. Here, the change in the unloading response at high levels of
shear cannot explicitly be deducted although a somewhat abrupt change in the moment-
shear interaction is observed around fty percent shear capacity. Nevertheless, a continuous,
generally smooth reduction of the moment capacity is observed all the way to ultimate shear
capacity. It is further noted that the present procedure predicts a moment capacity of the
cross section even at ultimate shear loading. This is to be expected, as the the shear stresses
caused by the vertical shear force are assumed to act only on the plating. Thus, the stieners
are unaected by the presence of shear and will therefore produce a moment capacity of the
cross section at any shear loading.
Comparing these results with the curves presented in [17] a good overall agreement is found.
Moreover, the present procedure produces smooth moment-curvature response predictions
in comparison with the results shown in [17] where sharp drops in moment response occurs
after the ultimate capacity is reached. Similarly, when comparing the ultimate moment
capacities an excellent agreement is achieved as shown below:
Ultimate capacity By [17] Present %
Hogging moment 2 2:03 GNm 3:94 GNm 2.9%
Sagging moment 2 1:63 GNm 3:11 GNm 4.6%
Shear force 2 81:1 MN 169 MN 4.2%
The dierence is three percent for the hogging capacity and ve percent in the sagging
condition. Also, with respect to the ultimate shear capacity of the cross section an excellent
agreement with the result presented in [17] is achieved with a discrepancy of some four
percent.
Finally, as it was one of the initial objectives of the present research to develop a rapid
procedure for the evaluation of the ultimate capacity of the hull girder, it is relevant to discuss
the time consumption of the present procedure when applied to a typical, real structure. For
the double hull tanker, the time used for calculation of one-thousand ultimate capacities at
dierent shear stress levels, evenly spread from zero to full shear capacity, was 1 hour and
forty-eight minutes when performed in-core on a Hewlett Packard C200 C-class workstation1 ,
giving an average computation time per ultimate capacity of 6.48 seconds. This excludes
the time used to solve the initial nite dierence description of the plate part for each of
152 beam-columns that makes up the entire cross section. This task alone required one hour
and twenty-ve minutes when utilizing the identical properties of some of the plates making
it necessary only to solve for about one-third of the total 152 plates. The reason for leaving
this part of the calculation out of the per ultimate moment performance rating, is that it
can most reasonably be considered as a post-processing task. Once this has been solved
for a given cross section in can be stored in a le along with the other data making up the
geometry denition and thereafter be reused for any subsequent calculations.
6.4 Summary
To summarize, two dierent test cases has been investigated with the purpose of verication
of the present procedure. The results hereby obtained has been compared with other pub-
1 The Hewlett Packard Company lists the performance of this model as: 14.3 SPECint95 / 21.4 SPECfp95
for integer and oating point operations respectively. The performance in million oating point operations
per second is at best listed to 550 MFLOPS.
6.4. Summary 107
lished ndings and in general the agreement can be concluded to be acceptable. In the case
of the Nishihara box girder the present procedure predicted the ultimate moment capacity
of the initially perfect structure within one percent of the experimental result by Nishihara
[31]. Compared with nonlinear nite element calculations by Melchior Hansen [17] for the
structure with assumed imperfections, the present procedure predicted results within two to
ve percent accuracy. Moreover, asymmetrical bending investigations of the Nishihara box
girder proved successful in capturing the symmetry conditions existing in the cross section
and thus lead to the conclusion that the present procedure indeed is capable of handling
asymmetrical bending.
Further, the midship section of a double hull tanker was analyzed in the combined loading
of bending about a horizontal axis and vertical shear force. The moment-curvature response
along with the moment-shear interaction as predicted by the present procedure was compared
with results published by Melchior Hansen [17] showing an excellent agreement both with
respect to the ultimate moment capacities, and with the predicted ultimate shear force
capacity. Hence, it is concluded that the capacities predicted by the present procedure are
accurate. Moreover, the comparison with the moment-curvature response in [17] showed
that the present procedure yields a more smooth unloading description which contradicts
the explanation oered in [17] where the very abrupt drops in response during unloading is
attributed to the collective collapse of large parts of the cross section. The response obtained
by the present procedure cannot substantiate this conclusion, as the post-ultimate response
of the structure for all levels of shear loading are indeed smooth.
Finally, the performance of the present procedure was evaluated and an average calculation
time of approximately seven seconds per ultimate moment capacity was achieved. Conse-
quently, the objective of developing a rapid procedure for the evaluation of the ultimate hull
girder strength can be concluded to have been meet by the present procedure.

Chapter 7
Application of the Procedure
7.1 Introduction
When originally formulating the objective of the present research, the goal was set to be
the development of a rapid procedure that, apart for being able to describe the structural
behavior of an intact vessel, also was applicable to damage conditions arising from grounding,
collision, re, and explosions. So far, the verication of the present procedure presented in
the previous chapter has been based on two test-cases of which one was a real, full scale
ship structure the other an experimental scale model. The objective of these two test-cases
was to demonstrate the present procedures capabilities to accurately assess the ultimate and
post-ultimate strength of the intact hull girder by comparison with known results. Having
successfully done that, the remaining task will be to demonstrate that the present procedure
can handle damaged conditions of the hull girder.
To do this, a vessel is selected for which the following three scenarios are analyzed:

For the intact condition, the aim is to analyze the structure both with and without the eect
of the hydrostatic pressure included as initial loading on the beam-columns. The pressure
loading will be taken as the ballast condition. Regarding the analyzes of the two damaged
conditions, then these will be based on ctitious scenarios made up from reference data
of real accidents when possible. Otherwise, best judgment will be used to create realistic
damage scenarios.
109
110 Chapter 7. Application of the Procedure
Table 7.1: Principal dimensions for the ultra large crude carrier.
Length between perpendiculars Lpp : 353.17 m
Length overall Loa : 370.40 m
Breadth moulded B : 60.00 m
Frame spacing amidship ` : 7.23 m
Depth moulded to upper deck D : 35.00 m
Draught in cargo condition Tc : 23.00 m
Draught in ballast condition Tb : 11.30 m
Displacement r : 414000 t
Deadweight DWT : 359500 t
Figure 7.1: Prole of the ultra large crude carrier.
7.2 Ultra Large Crude Carrier

The vessel selected for use in these investigations is a design study of a 360,000 deadweight
tons ultra large crude carrier (ULCC) with double hull. The prole of this vessel is shown in
Fig. 7.1 and the principal dimensions are listed in Tab. 7.1. Being a design study the vessel
has never actually been build. However, the midship section scantlings are in accordance with
the classication rules for steel ships by Det Norske Veritas [7]. Following these guidelines,
the maximum allowable still-water bending moment Ms and wave-induced bending moment
Mw for the vessel are:
( (
Ms = ,88::83 GNm in hogging and M =
07 GNm in sagging w
12:90 GNm in hogging
,13:66 GNm in sagging
Hence, the midship section has been designed to withstand a maximum bending moment
of 21:73 GNm. These design loads are relevant for evaluation of damaged conditions of the
vessel, as they form a basis { although somewhat crude { to evaluate whether the damage
vessel is in a structural safe condition or not. The entire midship section is made from high
tensile steel with a yield stress equal to 390 MPa as listed in Tab. 7.2. The table further lists
the sectional parameter for the midship section. Finally, the structural layout of the midship
section is shown in Fig. 7.2 with the transverse web-frames to the left and the longitudinal
7.2. Ultra Large Crude Carrier 111
Table 7.2: Sectional and longitudinal strength parameters for the ULCC.
Sectional Parameters:
Frame spacing amidship ` : 7.23 m
Yield stress y : 390 MPa
Young's modulus E : 210 GPa
Sectional area A : 14.05 m2
Moment of inertia Iyy : 1883.98 m4
Elastic neutral axis ENA : 13.41 m
Plastic neutral axis PNA : 10.57 m
First yield moment My : 34.03 GNm
Plastic moment Mp : 52.56 GNm
Section modulus (deck) Wdeck : 87.25 m3
Section modulus (keel) Wkeel : 140.52 m3
Figure 7.2: Structural layout of the ULCC midship section.

elements to the right. Regarding the imperfections, then an initial stiener de ection equal
to `/200 = 36 mm is assumed, where ` is the frame spacing. This initial de ection will be
applied to all of the following analyzes.
From the longitudinal strength parameters listed in Tab. 7.2 it is noted that compared with
the maximum design bending moment of 21:73 GNm, the rst yield moment My equal to
34:03 GNm is signicantly larger. At a rst glance, this seems to indicate a somewhat
over-scantled midship section. However, this is to be expected for a double hull structure
this large. Here, the scantlings will in general be dictated by the pressure loading on the
stiened panels, where the class rules will require quite large dimensions of both the plating
and the stieners, to ensure the avoidance of local buckling. Thus, this will normally cause
the overall longitudinal strength of the midship section to be more than adequate compared
with the design bending moment.
7.3 As-Build Condition

The ultra large crude carrier has been analyzed in the as-build condition with the assumed
initial de ection of 36 mm imposed on the stieners. The loading was chosen to be a vertical
shear force in combination with an asymmetrical bending moment. The remaining load
components, i.e. horizontal shear force, torsional moment, and pressure loading, were set
to zero. Thus, this initial investigation of the ultra large crude carrier is, except for the
asymmetrical bending, identical to the one previously performed on the double hull tanker
structure as part of the verication of the present procedure.
Looking rst at the longitudinal strength of the midship section in this loading condition,
then the ultimate capacities predicted by the present procedure are listed in Tab. 7.3. Fur-
ther, a graphical illustration of the predicted moment-curvature responses for eleven dierent
levels of vertical shear force, ranging from zero to ultimate shear capacity, is shown in Fig. 7.3.
Table 7.3: Predicted ultimate capacities for the ultra large crude carrier.
Plastic moment : 52.56 GNm ' 154% of 1st yield moment
Vertical shear force capacity : 1.60 GN (
Hogging moment capacity : 45.01 GNm ' 132% 86% of plastic moment
of 1st yield moment
(
Sagging moment capacity : -30.46 GNm ' 58% of plastic moment
90% of 1st yield moment
7.3. As-Build Condition 113
Figure 7.3: Moment-curvature response for the ultra large crude carrier.
To validate the predicted longitudinal strength a comparison with the reserve strength fac-
tors for the ultimate longitudinal strength of various ship types published by the Technical
Committee III.1 of ISSC'94 [11] is made. For a similar vessel, being a double hull very large
crude carrier of same general cross section layout, [11] lists the following factors:
Plastic / rst yield moment Mp=My = 1:42

Ultimate hogging / rst yield moment My;hogu =My = 1:23
Ultimate sagging / rst yield moment My;sagu =My = 0:95
Compared with the corresponding fractions in Tab. 7.3 an acceptable correlation is observed,
although it is seen that the present procedure predicts a little higher plastic moment and hog-
ging capacity, but also a little less sagging capacity than reported in [11]. This is attributed
Figure 7.4: Interaction chart for the vertical shear force and the ultimate moment about
the instantaneous neutral axis oriented between 0 and 180 degrees.
to the current vessel being a design study rather than a real tanker which has actually been
build. Consequently, it must be expected that the scantlings of the current ultra large crude
carrier will be somewhat conservative, explaining the larger plastic moment and hogging ca-
pacity. This was also observed previously when comparing the design bending moment with
the rst yield moment of the midship section. Here the present procedure found a rst yield
moment roughly fty percent larger than the required design moment which also indicates
a somewhat conservative design.
Moving on to consider the eect of asymmetrical bending of the cross section, then Fig. 7.4
shows the predicted interaction between the vertical shear force and the ultimate bending
moment about the instantaneous neutral axis oriented between 0 and 180 degrees. The
horizontal plane in the gure is a polar representation of the vertical shear force for dierent
orientations (angles) of the instantaneous neutral axis relative to horizontal. The upper
surface then shows the ultimate hogging moment and similarly the lower surface shows the
ultimate sagging moment for dierent levels of the vertical shear force at dierent angles
. Thus, any vertical plane through the origin of the reference system depicts the moment-
shear interaction at a specic orientation of the instantaneous neutral axis. It is noted that
the terms hogging and sagging in this context refers to the positive and negative part of
the moment response with respect to the current orientation of instantaneous neutral axis.
Hence, at = 90o the physical meaning of the two terms swaps with respect to how the
section actually de ects. Further, due to the symmetry of the cross section the sagging
Figure 7.5: Interaction chart for the vertical shear force and the ultimate moment about
the instantaneous neutral axis oriented at 0, 45, and 90 degrees.
response shown in the gure will be identical to the hogging response for orientations of
the instantaneous neutral axis in the range 180o to 360o, only with reversed sign. Likewise,
will the shown hogging response also be identical to the sagging response except for sign
in the range 180o to 360o. This can also be observed from Fig. 7.4 where the sagging
(negative) response for = 0o is identical to the hogging (positive) response for = 180o
and vice versa for hogging and sagging also at these two angles.
To obtain a more detailed picture of the moment-shear interaction, Fig. 7.5 shows the ul-
timate moment capacity versus the vertical shear force for the instantaneous neutral axis
oriented at zero degrees (horizontal), forty-ve degrees, and ninety degrees (vertical). The
plot shows an increasing moment capacity as the instantaneous neutral axis rotates from
horizontal to vertical. This is to be expected as the cross section is nearly twice as wide as
it is high (B = 60 m, D = 35 m). Thus, the leverage of the axial response forces from each
beam-column increases with the rotation of the instantaneous neutral axis yielding a higher
moment at collapse.
Figure 7.6: Ultimate moment interaction chart for the intact condition. The shown
interaction formula is proposed by Mansour et al. [26].
The same observation can be made from Fig. 7.6 where the the interaction between the ulti-
mate bending moment about the vertical and horizontal axis is shown for ve dierent levels
of vertical shear force. Here, it is consistently seen that the ultimate bending capacity about
the vertical axis is larger than about the horizontal axis. Another interesting observation
can be made from this gure. Looking rst at the ultimate moment about the horizontal
axis in the case of pure bending, it is observed that in the sagging part of the response,
the moment actually increases when the instantaneous neutral axis in rotated just a small
angle away from horizontal orientation. This behavior is persistent for all levels of shear.
Moreover, at higher levels of shear the same behavior is observed rst for the hogging part
of the response, and then also around the ultimate moment about the vertical axis. The
explanation for this behavior is the highly nonlinear change in the leverage to the individual
beam-columns, and thereby also in the corresponding end-displacements for a specic curva-
ture. Thus, just a small rotation angle away from either a horizontal or a vertical orientation
of the instantaneous neutral axis will have a large eect on the moment capacity of the cross
section. The reason why this behavior is rst observed for the sagging part of the response
lies in the double bottom structure being comparatively much stier than the deck structure.
Consequently in the sagging condition where the deck is in compression and the bottom is in
tension, the assumed linear elastic, ideal plastic response of the individual beam-columns in
tension will yield practically the same axial response force for each beam-column at ultimate
capacity, but with a signicantly larger leverage, whereas the beam-columns in compression
yields a comparatively smaller axial response force due the the implemented unloading. The
net eect must therefore be expected to be an increase in the moment capacity just as it is
observed in Fig. 7.6. The same argument can be applied to explain the moment interaction
around all four of the horizontal and vertical extremes.
Finally, a comment pertinent to the predicted moment interaction at full shear capacity
should be made. From the plot in Fig. 7.6 it is obvious that the response predicted by the
present procedure is somewhat non-smooth and further lacks a little the expected symmetry.
This behavior is directly related to the assumed idealized load-displacement response for each
beam-column. At full shear capacity the plate cannot withstand any direct loading. Thus,
all the beam-columns are in essence reduced to being just a stiener. As previously described
in the discussion of the results obtained for the double hull tanker during the verication
process (see Section 6.3.3) the predicted load-displacement response at full shear capacity is
somewhat dubious with respect to the compressive unloading of the beam-column. Too much
condence should therefore not be put in the response predicted by the present procedure
at the ultimate shear capacity. However, as a loading condition consisting almost entirely
of shear is unrealistic for any real vessel, this is an acceptable limitation of the present
procedure. This because it, for the same reason, poses no real limitation with respect to
emergency response application of the present procedure. With respect to probabilistic
analyzes, it should not matter either as even if the response is requested, the probability of
occurrence will be extremely low yielding practically no net eect on the analysis result.
7.3.1 Moment Interaction Formulas

The interaction between the ultimate horizontal and vertical moments has by many authors
been sought expressed through simple interaction formulas. The use of an interaction formula
will of course be a much faster procedure for obtaining the moment response of the cross
section. Thus, as one of the main objectives of the present research is to develop a rapid
procedure for the evaluation of the ultimate capacity of the hull girder, it is interesting to
investigate if the response obtained by application of the present procedure can be described
just as good by a simple interaction formula.
In Fig. 7.6 the predicted interaction by one such interaction formula, published originally by
Mansour and Thayamballi [27], is shown tted to mimic the pure bending response, i.e. for
zero vertical shear force. The same formula was applied in a later study by Mansour et
al. [26], where four dierent vessels were investigated. One of these vessels was a tanker and
the results obtained in [26] showed an excellent agreement between the numerical data and
the interaction formula given in Eqs. (7.1) and (7.2), taken from [26].
!
My + k Mz 2 = 1 if Mz < My (7.1)
My,u Mz,u Mz,u My,u
!2
Mz + k My = 1 if My < Mz (7.2)
Mz,u My,u My,u Mz,u
Assuming a fully plastizied cross section, without any imperfections or buckling, the t
parameter k was in [27] derived to be
k = 16A (A ,(AA+) ,2A4(s)A , A )2

2
(7.3)
s s d b
in which Ad, As, and Ab is the cross sectional area of the deck, the side, and the bottom
respectively, all including the stieners. Thus, the total cross sectional area is A = Ad +
2As + Ab. It is noted that because of the inherent assumption of a fully plastizied cross
section in Eq. (7.3), the interaction formula in Eqs. (7.1) and (7.2) cannot { based on the
k parameter in Eq. (7.3) { reasonably be expected to mimic the behavior predicted by the
present procedure in the sagging part of the response. This because, in the present procedure,
the ultimate capacity always will be reached before the cross section is fully plastizied due to
the inclusion of imperfection, buckling, etc. Thus, in the sagging part of the response, where
the deck of the tanker is in compression, the behavior will be far from plastic as evidently
shown in Fig. 7.6. However, the interaction formula is applicable in the hogging part of
the response. Here, the deck will be in tension and the bottom will be in compression. As
the tensile behavior of the deck will be almost plastic, and because of the very sti double
bottom, the compressive behavior of this part of the cross section will also be close to plastic,
it can be expected that the response predicted by the present procedure can be related to
the interaction formula in Eqs. (7.1) and (7.2).
By insertion into Eq. (7.3) the t parameter k is, for the present case, found to be equal to
0.88. In comparison a numerically tted value of 0.80 was in [26] found to yield the best
approximation to the numerical data for the tanker investigated in that study. However,
observing the interaction curve in Fig. 7.6 based on k = 0:88, the correlation between the
interaction formula and the numerical data predicted by the present procedure for pure bend-
ing of the cross section, is somewhat disappointing. The interaction predicted by Eqs. (7.1)
and (7.2) is obviously very low compared to the present pure bending results. This may be
because of the very sti double bottom and double side structure for the present ultra large
crude carrier. When evaluating the longitudinal strength of the vessel, it was found that the
strength of the tanker was very high compared to the design requirements by Det Norske
Veritas [7]. In correlation with the assumed fully plastic response in the derivation of the
k parameter in Eq. (7.3), this is most likely the major contributing factor explaining why
the present case yields such poor comparison with the interaction formula. Especially when
considering that excellent correlation was found by Mansour et al. [26] for another tanker.
However, as in [26], a numerical t of the k parameter has been performed also, yielding
a value of 0.38. The t was performed in the hogging part of the moment response only,
as the interaction formula cannot be expected to give good correlation with the sagging
response due to the highly nonlinear behavior of the structure in this region. Looking at
the interaction curve in Fig. 7.6 based on this new value k = 0:38 the correlation with the
numerical data is seen to be quite good. Of course, the discontinuous response where the
formula changes from Eq. (7.1) to Eq. (7.2) becomes more pronounced with the lower k
parameter, as also seen in Fig. 7.6. The large dierence in the k parameter obtained by
Eq. (7.3) and the numerical further substantiates the previous conclusion, i.e. that for the
present tanker, the behavior of the cross section is far from ideal plastic in the ultimate state
because of the very sti double bottom and side structure. Thus, as the expression for the
k parameter given in Eq. (7.3) is based on the assumption of a fully plastic cross section, it
is obvious that the interaction formula should be judged on the numerically tted k rather
than on the k given by Eq. (7.3). Doing this, the agreement is, as already stated, quite good.
Nevertheless, the problem with the non-smooth response caused by the division of the for-
mula into two parts still exists, even more pronounced in the numerically tted response.
To address this, a classical interaction formula is suggested dened as
!1 !2 !3
My + Mz + Qz =1 (7.4)
My,u Mz,u Qz,u
i.e. formulated in the both the combined bending moments and the vertical shear force.
However, when trying to t this formula (Eq. (7.4)) to the response predicted by the present
procedure, it became evident that the eect of the vertical shear force Qz already entered the
formula through the ultimate bending capacities My,u and Mz,u which obviously are highly
correlated to the vertical shear force. Thus, the formulation of the suggested interaction
formula is changed to
!1 !2
My + Mz =1 (7.5)
My,u Mz,u
This interaction formula (Eq. (7.5)) has been numerically tted to the data obtained by the
present procedure yielding the two powers 1 and 2 equal to 1.95 and 3.66 respectively. As
with the previous t of the interaction formula proposed by Mansour et al. [26], only the
hogging part of the response was tted. This because also the present interaction formula
(Eq. (7.5)) cannot be expected to mimic the highly nonlinear behavior in the sagging part
of the response as it simply is impossible for the expression in Eq. (7.5) to assumed the
shape of the sagging response. Thus, focusing on the hogging response, the obtained t is
Figure 7.7: Ultimate moment interaction for the intact condition as predicted
by the interaction formula in Eq. (7.5).
shown in Fig. 7.7 for ve dierent levels of vertical shear force ranging from zero to ultimate
shear capacity. Observing the tted curves in comparison with the response predicted by
the present procedure (shown as points in the plot) a smooth set of curves with an overall
good correlation is seen to be achieved by the tted interaction formula { especially when
considering that the tted powers 1 and 2 are valid for all levels of vertical shear. Thus,
it is the same interaction formula used to produce all ve curves shown in Fig. 7.7.
Of course, the correlation in the sagging part of the response is as expected, less favorable
as it was for the formula proposed by Mansour et al. [26], because of the nonlinear behavior
found here. Neither of these two interaction formulas can be made to mimic the shape of
the sagging response as predicted by the present procedure. Therefore, even though the
second formula (Eq. (7.5)) ts very nicely in the hogging region of the moment response,
substituting the present procedure with an interaction formula is not recommendable.
7.4. Ballast Condition 121
Figure 7.8: Sketch of the pressure distribution in ballast condition.
7.4 Ballast Condition

To investigate the eect of pressure loading on the hull, the ballast condition of the ultra
large crude carrier has been modeled and analyzed by the present procedure. In the ballast
condition the entire double hull is lled with sea water and the tanker has a draught of
11:3 m. The resulting hydrostatic pressure distribution is sketched in Fig. 7.8. The ballast
condition thus represents the most severe pressure loading of the inner plating of the double
hull. Of course, in the cargo condition the draught is larger (23:0 m) yielding a higher
Table 7.4: Predicted ultimate capacities for the ultra large crude carrier
in its ballast condition.
Plastic moment : 52.56 GNm
Vertical shear force capacity : 1.60 GN (
Hogging moment capacity : 42.67 GNm ' 125% 81% of plastic moment
of 1st yield moment
(
91% of 1st yield moment
Figure 7.9: Moment-curvature response for the ultra large crude carrier
hydrostatic pressure on the outer skin of the midship section. However, the cargo carried
by the tanker will typically have a lower specic density than sea water. Thus, the pressure
on the inner hull will in the cargo condition be lower than that caused by the ballast water.
Moreover, as the plate thickness of the outer skin is larger than the inner skin, then the
higher pressure on the outer skin in the cargo condition is not as sever a loading of the entire
cross section, as a the ballast condition is with respect to the inner skin.
The obtained prediction of the longitudinal strength of the tanker in this ballast condition
are listed in Tab. 7.4. Further, the corresponding moment-curvature response for bending
about a horizontal axis is shown in Fig. 7.9 for eleven dierent levels of shear ranging from
zero to ultimate shear capacity. The shear loading is the same as for the intact, as-build
condition previously investigated. That is, only a vertical shear force is assumed to act on
the cross section together with the bending moment. Horizontal shear and torque is thus
ignored in the present analysis.
7.4. Ballast Condition 123
Figure 7.10: Ultimate moment interaction chart for the ultra large crude carrier
Comparing the predicted capacities in Tab. 7.4 with the corresponding capacities for the
intact, as-build condition of the tanker listed in Tab. 7.3, it is observed that the presence of
hydrostatic pressure on parts of the cross section, equivalent to the ballast condition, causes
a ve percent reduction of the ultimate moment capacity in hogging, relative to the plastic
moment. The ultimate moment capacity in sagging is however only reduced by one percent
again relative to the plastic moment. Regarding the eect of the vertical shear force, then
by comparing the moment-curvature response for the ballast condition shown in Fig. 7.9
with the previously obtained response for the intact, as-build condition in Fig. 7.3, two
observations are made: First, the presence of hydrostatic pressure tends to atten the post-
ultimate moment response and second, the moment capacity of the cross section at ultimate
shear capacity is signicantly increased in the hogging condition, whereas the response is
only slightly decreased in the sagging condition. This even though the ultimate moment
capacity at zero shear loading, i.e. in pure bending, is decreased by ve percent.
The explanation for this behavior is to be found in the sign of the pressure and initial
de ection. Being in ballast condition, the hydrostatic pressure will be acting on the plating
from the same side the longitudinal stiening is attached to the plating. The initial de ection
on the other hand is assumed to be in the opposite direction. Thus, with the decreasing axial
strength of the plate at increased levels of shear loading, the pressure loading on the stiener
will tend to make the beam-column more sti in its compressive response, than it was in
the intact, as-build condition without any pressure loading. On the other hand, in the post-
ultimate tensile response, the relative small initial imperfection will almost be non-existing
because of the excessive staining (elongation) associated with the response. Hence, the eect
of pressure on the beam-column in tension will be a slight decrease in axial load capacity.
Therefore, in the sagging condition where the deck is in compression and the bottom in
tension, only a small eect of the hydrostatic pressure is to be expected. This because the
deck is unaected by the pressure and the bottom, being in tension, only will exhibit a slight
decrease in axial load capacity. In the hogging condition on the other hand, the deck will be
in tension and the bottom in compression. Hence, as a major part the the structure being
in compression will also be aected by the hydrostatic pressure, it is to be expected that a
decrease of the moment capacity will occur which also is observed in Fig. 7.9.
Another eect caused by the presence of hydrostatic pressure is observed from the moment
interaction shown in Fig. 7.10. Compared with the result obtained for the intact, as-build
condition shown in Fig. 7.6 it is seen that the presence of hydrostatic pressure on parts of
the structure, apart from having a smoothening eect on the moment interaction predicted
by the present procedure, also tends to make the nonlinear response in the sagging condition
less pronounced. As the hydrostatic pressure is highest in the bottom which in the sagging
condition is in compression and as the hydrostatic pressure has the greatest impact on the
load capacity in compression, then in light of the previous ndings concerning the moment-
curvature response, this reduction of the nonlinear response in the sagging condition is to
be expected.
The smoothening of the moment interaction is attributed to the reduced compressive load-
displacement response of the individual beam-columns. This together with the almost unaf-
fected tensile load-displacement response causes a general reduction of the nonlinear behavior
of the cross section resulting in a more smooth moment interaction.
7.5 Grounding Damage Condition

To investigate the eect of grounding damage on the ultimate capacity of the hull girder,
knowledge of the extent of the damage is naturally a prerequisite. However, as the tanker
presently being analyzed has never been build, information on a real grounding condition
is non-existing. In lieu, a ctitious bottom damage has been dened based on a real life
grounding accident of a single skin, very large crude carrier (VLCC) reported by Kuroiwa
[25]. The accident occurred on January 6th 1975, as a 240,000 deadweight tons tanker ran
onto the Bualo Reef o the coast of Singapore, spilling more than 10,000 tons of oil. A
7.5. Grounding Damage Condition 125
Figure 7.11: Bottom damage on single skin VLCC after grounding.

(Adopted from Kuroiwa [25]).
sketch of the reported damage to the hull structure is shown in Fig. 7.11. During the initial
grounding, the bottom of the vessel was torn open for about 180 m from the bow to the
middle of center tank number three. Moreover, after the initial grounding, the vessel was
stuck for ten days on the reef, explaining the severe expansion of the damage around center
tank number three.
Considering the tearing part of this grounding near amidship, the ctitious bottom damage
has been assumed to have the horizontal and vertical extent as shown in Fig. 7.12. That
is, the outer skin of the double bottom from the centerline to the hopper tank plus the
girder in the double bottom under the longitudinal bulkhead, is assumed torn away during
the grounding. The longitudinal extent of the damage is assumed far beyond the length of
the section being investigated, i.e. greater than ` = 7:23 m. All the structural members in
the damaged zone are thus ignored in the model of the damaged cross section. The shear
loading in this damaged condition is assumed to be a uniform scaling of all the three shear
stress distributions arising from vertical and horizontal shear forces, and from the St. Venant
torsion. That is, it is assumed that the two shear forces and the torsional moment all scale
equally.
Figure 7.12: Sketch of the ctitious bottom damage.
Looking rst at the longitudinal strength of the ultra large crude carrier in this grounding
condition, the moment capacities of the midship section, as predicted by the present proce-
dure, are listed in Tab. 7.5 along with the predicted rst yield moment and the fully plastic
moment. Granted, in the current damage condition the cross section is asymmetrical, and
the concept of longitudinal strength is therefore somewhat dubious. The results presented in
the table as longitudinal strength are in fact the results obtained for a horizontal orientation
of the instantaneous neutral axis. Thus, the cross section is forced to bend about a horizontal
axis, which for the present case is considered representable for longitudinal strength. The
longitudinal strength data is further presented as moment-curvature responses in Fig. 7.13
for eleven dierent levels of shear loading ranging from zero to full shear capacity.
Table 7.5: Predicted ultimate capacities for the ultra large crude carrier
after a bottom damage as shown in Fig. 7.12.
First yield moment : 32.24 GNm ' 95% of intact condition
Plastic moment : 48.38 GNm ' 92% of intact condition
Predicted Ultimate Capacities: (
Hogging moment capacity : 40.70 GNm ' 84% of plastic moment
( 90% of intact condition
95% of intact condition
7.5. Grounding Damage Condition 127
Figure 7.13: Moment-curvature response for the ultra large crude carrier in the assumed
grounding condition with uniformly scaled, fully combined shear loading.
From Tab. 7.5 it is seen that the presence of the assumed bottom damage causes a ve to
eight percent reduction in the rst yield moment and plastic moment respectively compared
with the intact, as-build condition listed in Tab. 7.3. The predicted ultimate moment ca-
pacity in hogging is seen to have been reduced by only two percent relative to the plastic
moment, whereas the ultimate sagging moment has been increased by a similar two percent
again relative to the plastic moment. Of course the absolute magnitude of the two moment
capacities has both been decreased compared to the as-build condition. However, it is inter-
esting to look at the change in hogging and sagging moment capacities relative to the current
plastic moment, as this gives an impression of the eect of the asymmetric cross section on
the moment capacities. Thus, judging by these numbers, the eect of asymmetry seems
to be quite modest. This is further substantiated by comparison with the intact capacities
which also are listed in Tab. 7.3. Here the present procedure predicts an ultimate hogging
capacity which is ten percent less than the intact capacity. Regarding the ultimate sagging
Figure 7.14: Ultimate moment interaction chart for the assumed grounding condition
with uniformly scaled, fully combined shear loading.
capacity it is seen to be reduced by only ve percent compared to the intact capacity. This
dierence in reduction is to be expected as the extend of the damage is localized to the
bottom part of the structure. Thus, because of the dierent handling of the post-ultimate
load-displacement response of the individual beam-columns in compressive and tensile load-
ing, where unloading only occurs for the compressive part, the eect of the bottom damage
must be expected to be bigger when the bottom is in compression (hogging) than when it is
in tension (sagging).
To get a better impression of the eect of the asymmetric cross section, the interaction
between the ultimate bending moment about the vertical and horizontal axis is shown in
Fig. 7.14. The rst observation which can be made from this gure is that the moment
interaction exhibits the same overall behavior as in the intact condition with respect to
increased moment capacity for orientations of the instantaneous neutral axis just slightly o
horizontal and vertical. This behavior has already been explained in relation to the intact
condition. However, compared with the response behavior for the intact condition shown
7.6. Fire and Explosion Damage Condition 129
Figure 7.15: Assumed temperature distribution by a re in the right wing cargo tank.
in Fig. 7.6, it is seen that the somewhat elliptic shape of the response is slightly tilted to
the right. This is to be expected because of the change in the principal axes caused by the
asymmetry of the cross section. The cross sectional analysis yielded a principal coordinate
system rotated 2:29o as shown with dashed lines in Fig. 7.14. Obviously, this is also re ected
in the slightly tilted moment response predicted by the present procedure. Moreover, the
ultimate moment response depicted in the rst and third quadrant are equivalent to the
bottom damage zone being in compression, whereas the second and fourth quadrant represent
the damage zone in tension. This explains why the predicted moment capacity in higher in
the second and fourth quadrant than in the rst and third quadrant.
7.6 Fire and Explosion Damage Condition

To further demonstrate the present procedures applicability to vessels in damage conditions,
a ctitious damage scenario involving re and explosion has been dened to illustrate the
ability of the present procedures to analyze this kind of damage to the structure. A re
in the right wing cargo tank is supposed to have been started due to an explosion in that
cargo hold following a collision. The situation being investigated is during the re where the
resulting temperature distribution in the immediate vicinity of the re is assumed to be as
sketched in Fig. 7.15. The consequence of this re is included in the model of the cross section
through reduced stiness and strength of the steel in the heat aected zone. That is, the
Young's modulus and the yield stress are reduced according to the assumed temperatures.
The reduction is based on the behavior of carbon steel at elevated temperatures given in the
Guidance Notes on explosion on re by the Steel Construction Institute [3] listed in Tab. 7.6.
Table 7.6: Stiness and strength of carbon steel at elevated temperatures.
Steel Fraction Fraction Steel Fraction Fraction
temperature of Young's of yield temperature of Young's of yield
in o C modulus stress in oC modulus stress
20 1.00 1.00 700 0.13 0.075
100 1.00 1.00 800 0.09 0.050
200 0.90 0.807 900 0.0675 0.0375
300 0.80 0.613 1000 0.0450 0.0250
400 0.70 0.420 1100 0.0225 0.0125
500 0.60 0.360 1200 0.0000 0.0000
600 0.31 0.180 1350 0.0 0.0
The shear loading in this damaged condition is identical to the shear loading applied in the
grounding condition. Thus, it is assumed that the shear loading in the damaged condition
is representable by a uniform scaling of all the three shear stress distributions arising from
vertical and horizontal shear forces, and from the St. Venant torsion. That is, it is assumed
that the two shear forces and the torsional moment all scale equally.
The predicted ultimate capacities relating to the longitudinal strength of the ultra large
crude carrier in this re damage condition is listed in Tab. 7.7. As for the grounding damage
scenario, bending about the horizontal axis is considered to be representable as longitudinal
strength even though the cross section is asymmetric. From the table it is observed that the
reduction in strength, caused by the elevated temperatures in the heat aected zone, is quite
signicant. The predicted full plastic moment of the cross section about the horizontal axis
is reduced to only 76% of the intact, as-build condition. Regarding the ultimate moment
capacities, then a reduction of 23% is observed both for the hogging and sagging capacity.
The relative utilization of the cross section, hereby understood the relative to the current
full plastic moment, is however quite high even in this severely damaged condition, being
Table 7.7: Predicted ultimate capacities for the ultra large crude carrier in the assumed
re damage condition with uniformly scaled, fully combined shear loading.
Plastic moment : 40.05 GNm ' 76% of intact condition
Predicted Ultimate Capacities: (
Hogging moment capacity : 34.84 GNm ' 87% of plastic moment
( 77% of intact condition
77% of intact condition
7.6. Fire and Explosion Damage Condition 131
Figure 7.16: Moment-curvature response for the ultra large crude carrier in the assumed
re damage condition with uniformly scaled, fully combined shear loading.
87% and 59% of the full plastic moment for the ultimate hogging and sagging moment
respectively.
The same data for the longitudinal strength is presented also as moment-curvature responses
in Fig. 7.161 for eleven dierent levels of shear loading ranging from zero to full shear capacity.
It is noted that the comparison with the rst yield moment has been left out in this case.
This is due to the variation in the material parameters for the cross section as a consequence
of the elevated temperatures in the heat aected zone. With the yield stress in the zone
exposed to 900 oC being less than four percent of the nominal value, the concept of rst
yield losses its practical meaning for comparison with the ultimate capacities of the cross
1The ranges on the two axes, i.e. curvature and moment, as well as the scale of the plot, has deliberately
been made identical to the two previous moment-curvature plots (Figs. 7.3 and 7.13) to allow for easy
comparison.
Figure 7.17: Ultimate moment interaction chart for the assumed re damage condition
with uniformly scaled, fully combined shear loading.
section. Thus, it has been left out, both in Fig. 7.16 and also in Tab. 7.7.
As for the previous cases, the interaction between the ultimate bending moment about
the vertical and horizontal axis is interesting to investigate as it helps to provide a better
understanding of how the heat-induced asymmetry of the cross section aects the ultimate
capacities. The predicted ultimate moment interaction is therefore shown in Fig. 7.17. From
the plot it is observed that the curves in the present case are tilted to the left. This is
to be expected as the location of the re damage is in the upper right-hand corner of the
cross section as illustrated in Fig. 7.15. The non-smooth behavior at full shear capacity is
already explained. However, for the present case it is observed also to begin aecting the
predicted response at three-quarters of the full shear capacity. However, a quite signicant
part of the structure has almost no residual load carrying capacity because of the re. The
load-displacement behavior of these members is thus very dicult to accurately obtain for
all levels of shear loading. Hence, it must be expected that non-smooth behavior of the
predicted moment capacities will arise from this. Moreover, with the re damage located in
7.7. Summary 133
Table 7.8: Summary of the longitudinal strength of the ultra large crude carrier
in pure bending as predicted by the present procedure.
Longitudinal strength Predicted ultimate capacity
First yield Plastic Hogging Sagging
Investigated condition moment moment moment moment
My Mp Muhog
;y Musag;y
[GNm] [GNm] [GNm] [GNm]
Intact, as-build 34.03 52.56 45.01 (132%) -30.46 (90%)
Ballast 34.03 52.56 42.67 (125%) -30.95 (91%)
Grounding damage 32.24 48.38 40.70 (120%) -28.99 (85%)
Fire/explosion damage { 40.05 34.84 (102%) -23.55 (69%)
NOTE: Parenthesized numbers indicates percent of the rst yield moment for the intact,
as-build condition, i.e. of My = 34:03 GNm.
the upper right-hand corner of the midship section, the ultimate moment response depicted
in the rst and third quadrant are equivalent to the damage zone being in tension, whereas
the response in the second and fourth quadrant is equivalent to the damage zone being in
compression. This is why the ultimate capacities in the rst and third quadrant are higher
than those in the second and fourth quadrant.
7.7 Summary
In the previous sections the results of the four investigations performed on the midship
section of an ultra large crude carrier has been reported. However, in this process very little
eort has been made to cross reference the hereby obtained ultimate capacities and moment
interaction responses. Therefore, to complete the reporting this will be addressed in the
following.
Considering rst the longitudinal strength of the ultra large crude carrier, then Tab. 7.8
lists the capacities of the midship section as predicted by the present procedure in the
four dierent conditions of the vessel which has been analyzed. For reference, the midship
section of the ultra large crude carrier being investigated, has been designed to withstand a
maximum bending moment of 21:73 GNm. Observing the listed capacities in both hogging
and sagging condition, it can be concluded that in none of the presently investigated cases
does a transgression below the maximum withstandable bending moment occur. Thus, for
the present ultra large crude carrier, none of the investigated damage conditions { and
certainly not any of the intact conditions { poses any real threat to the survival of the vessel,
judging by the design criterions set by Det Norske Veritas [7] on the loading. However, as
previously stated, the midship section of the ultra large crude carrier seems to be somewhat
over-scantled, which also can be deducted from the percentages of the rst yield moment
Figure 7.18: Comparative plot of the moment-curvature response for the ultra large
crude carrier as predicted by the present procedure.
in the intact, as-build condition shown in parentheses in Tab. 7.8. From these percentages
it is further noted that the ultimate hogging capacity is consistently greater than the rst
yield moment in the intact, as-build condition, whereas the opposite is true for the sagging
capacity, being consistently lower than the rst yield moment.
This is of course to be expected due to the double bottom structure being very sti compared
with the stiness of the deck structure. Thus, the compressive strength of the deck will be
small compared with the bottom. Therefore, in the hogging condition, where the deck is
in tension and the bottom in compression, the moment capacity of the cross section will
be quite formidable, whereas in the sagging condition, the deck structure will collapse prior
to rst yield capacity as indicated in Tab. 7.8, and clearly shown in Fig. 7.18 where the
predicted moment-curvature response for all four conditions is plotted for the case of pure
bending and for the case of ultimate shear capacity.
7.8. Final Assessment 135
Figure 7.19: Comparative plot of the moment interaction for the ultra large
crude carrier as predicted by the present procedure.
Regarding the interaction between horizontal and vertical bending moment, then Fig. 7.19
shows the predicted response for all four analyzed condition both in the pure bending case
and ultimate shear loading case. From the plot it is observed that the intact, as-build
condition clearly constitutes the envelope for the interaction of the ultimate moment. This
is to be expected as the three other condition each represent either a more severely loaded
condition or a damaged condition with resulting less structural capacity.
7.8 Final Assessment

It has been the objective of this chapter to demonstrate that the present procedure was
capable of accurately predicting the ultimate capacity of vessels in both intact and damaged
conditions. Towards this end, an ultra large crude carrier was selected for investigation and
for this vessel the following conditions has been analyzed:
1. Intact, as-build condition and ballast condition.

The results hereby obtained has been presented throughout this chapter and has been sum-
marized in the previous section. Based on these results, the overall assessment of the present
procedure for the ultimate capacity of the hull girder is, that it has achieved the two primary
requirements. This rstly by being capable of accurately describing the ultimate response
of both intact and damaged vessels and secondly, by being a rapid procedure.
Chapter 8
Conclusion and Recommendations
8.1 Conclusion
It has been the objective of the present research to develop and build a rapid computer based
analysis tool for calculation of the ultimate and post-ultimate capacity of the hull girder in
the general combined loading condition where the hull is exposed to moment, shear, torque,
and hydrostatic pressure. Then, to verify the validity of the procedure by comparison with
other methods and experimental results.
A performance evaluation of the available theoretical formulations { being the nite element
method, the idealized structural unit method, and the classical beam-column method { has
initially been conducted to form a basis for selection within the current context. Focusing not
only on overall speed of the three dierent methods, but also on accuracy, the beam-column
approach has been selected to form the foundation for the current research.
An idealized procedure based on the beam-column approach has then been developed. The
procedure relies on the asymmetrical forced curvature principle and is thus formulated di-
rectly in the bending moment about the instantaneous neutral axis, with the remaining shear
causing sectional forces as secondary parameters. Hereby, the present procedure allows for
analysis of asymmetric cross sections not only geometrically, but also in the form of material
properties such as the modulus of elasticity and the yield stress. The present procedure
accounts for all of the loading components specied in the objective, and further includes
the eect of an initial stiener de ection.
The present procedure has then been veried against both experimental ndings reported by
Nishihara [31] and, analytical results published by Melchior Hansen [17]. Although these two
references only includes bending about the horizontal axis together with a vertical shear force,
the overall evaluation of the performance of the present procedure proved very satisfactory.
Not only was the correlation between the response predicted by the present procedure and
137
138 Chapter 8. Conclusion and Recommendations
the ndings published in [31] and [17] very convincing by achieving a less than ve percent
deviation in all cases, the present procedure further excelled in being very fast indeed,
requiring less than seven seconds per ultimate moment evaluation for a full-sized, double
hull tanker cross section.
To further test the validity of the present procedure a series of four scenarios, involving both
intact and damaged conditions of the midship section of an ultra large crude carrier, was set
up to be analyzed. The conditions dened were:

2. Intact, ballast condition.
The aim of these four investigations has been to demonstrate the ability of the present
procedure to handle not only geometric and material asymmetry modeled by condition 3
and 4 respectively, but also the hydrostatic pressure loading on the hull structure as model
by condition 2. The initial, as-build condition (1) has been analyzed to provide both a
reference for comparison and to investigate the use of a simple moment interaction formula
as an alternative to the present procedure.
The response predicted by application of the present procedure to these four scenarios has
proven equally as satisfactory as the previously obtained results relating to the verication
process. The results conforms in every detail with the expected response behavior of the
ultra large crude carrier in each of the four analyzed conditions of the midship section. With
respect to the possible use of an interaction formula instead of the present procedure, then
the highly nonlinear moment response predicted most dominantly in the sagging condition,
proved this not to be a recommendable approach.
Finally, the developed computer code has, apart from being highly ecient, also proven to be
very robust. This has been achieved through great care taken not only in the formulation of
the numerical algorithms incorporated in the solution scheme, but also through a consistent
attention paid to the achievement of the best preconditioned analytical formulation of the
derived solution scheme.
In conclusion, the present procedure has proven capable of accurately predicting the ulti-
mate hull girder strength for the general combined loading condition in a robust and highly
procient manner. This, both for intact and damaged condition of the hull girder. There-
fore, it can be stated that the overall objective of the present research has been met by the
derivation and implementation of the present procedure.
8.2. Recommendation for Future Work 139
8.2 Recommendation for Future Work
The present research is concluded here. However, the current topic of structural capacity of
the hull girder is far from exhausted. Even limiting the scope to the beam-column approach,
as done in the present procedure, a number of sub-topics remains prone for further investi-
gation which might lead to some improvement of the present procedure. Should the research
be continued, the following subjects would be obvious candidates for further investigation:
The loss of stiness caused by tripping of the stiener should be incorporated into the
load-displacement description of the beam-columns.
The post-collapse behavior of the beam-columns can be investigated further to possibly
obtain a more accurate description of the unloading response.
The possible inclusion of also the warping part of the torque should be looked into. This
would greatly expand the type of structures which can be analyzed by the procedure.
\I've seen the rst and the last ... I've seen the beginning,
and now I see the ending."
William Faulkner
The Sound & April
The 8,Fury
1928
140 Chapter 8. Conclusion and Recommendations

Appendix A
The Asymmetrical Forced Curvature
Principle
A.1 Purpose & Objective

When accessing the global behavior of the entire hull cross section the forced curvature
principle is evoked as described previously in Chapter 4. Therefore, it is the purpose of the
following to explain the exact derivation of the system analysis in combined loading.
The idea behind the asymmetrical forced curvature principle is simple. First of all it builds
on the key assumption of Navier's hypothesis, i.e. that plane sections remain plane. This
is a fair description of the hull girder de ection when exposed to an asymmetrical bending
moment based on the assumed collapse mode being between two adjacent frames. Therefore,
dening the instantaneous neutral axis as the line where the strains equals zero, bending
will occur about this axis. Further, any bending moment about the instantaneous neutral
axis will be equivalent to a rotation of the strain-plane about the same axis.
Finally, assuming the the individual beam-column reacts independently of the adjacent
beam-columns, the response of each individual beam-column in the cross section then be-
comes only a function of how the ends of the beam-column is displaced and rotated, i.e. the
axial response force for the i th beam-column can be written as Pi(i; ). Hence, it is of key
interest in the overall system analysis to determine what the displacement of an individual
beam-column becomes given a pre-dened rotation of the strain-plane.
To do this requires knowledge of the perpendicular distance from the instantaneous neutral
axis to the reference point of the beam-column. Obtaining this distance is an exercise in
basic plane geometry which will be described in the following section.
141
142 Appendix A. The Asymmetrical Forced Curvature Principle
Figure A.1: Denition sketch of the asymmetrical forced curvature principle.
A.2 Plane Geometric Description

Based on all the assumptions made so far, the position of the strain-plane can be described
by three parameters (see Fig. A.1):
1. The rotation of the plane about the instantaneous neutral axis,

2. the angle between the global horizontal axis and the instantaneous neutral axis, and
3. the perpendicular distance INA from the instantaneous neutral axis to the origin of the
global coordinate system, i.e. the center of the baseline.
Let the two unit vectors e and n be dened by the angle between the global horizontal
axis and the instantaneous neutral axis as
! !
e = cos
sin ; n = e^ = , cos
sin

which are oriented parallel and perpendicular to the instantaneous neutral axis respectively,
then with the given orientation of the rotation of the strain-plane, the normal vector n
obtains the property of always being positively oriented into the tension zone.
A.2. Plane Geometric Description 143
Referring to Fig. A.1 the origin of the global coordinate system is located in point O. Point
S=(y; z) is the reference point of a single beam-column and point P is the intersection of the
line from the origin O perpendicular to the instantaneous neutral axis. Thus, the reference
point of the beam-column can be described by the vector OS, and similarly the point P by
the vector OP. These two vectors then becomes
! !
OS = yz and OP = INAn = INA , sin
cos
The aim is then to nd the distance from the beam-column reference point S perpendicular
to the instantaneous neutral axis. From Fig. A.1 it is observed that this distance can be
found by projecting the vector from point P to point S onto the normal vector n. Thus, the
PS vector needs to be determined. This is easily done as
! ! !
y , INA sin y , INA sin
PS = OS , OP = z , INA cos = z + INA cos
and thus the distance becomes
= n PS = ,y sin , INA sin2 + z cos , INA cos2
= ,INA , y sin + z cos (A.1)
A.2.1 Beam-Column End De ection and Rotation

The total end displacement of a beam-column at reference position S can now be found
simply as = 2 tan ' 2 if the rotation of the strain-plane is small. The times two is
because both of the ends of the entire hull cross section is exposed to the forced curvature
angle . The end rotation of the beam-column is simply as Navier's hypothesis is assumed
and thus, given a rotation angle of the instantaneous neutral axis (zero strain line) and a
rotation of the strain-plane about this axis, the response of any beam-column can now be
determined. This, because the the nal parameter INA (i.e. the location of the instantaneous
neutral axis) can be determined by requiring force equilibrium about that axis, i.e.
X
Pi(i; ) = 0 ; INA (A.2)
i ;
It should be noted that since the denition of the normal vector n was made such that it was
alway positively oriented into the tension zone of the cross section, and since the projection
to obtain the distance was made such that the the \length" is positively oriented in the same
direction as n, the total end displacement i = 2 is inherently oriented such that positive
displacements results in the tension zone and similarly negative displacements results in the
compression zone of the cross section.
Figure A.2: Denition of the local beam-column reference system.
A.3 Local Beam-Column Description

In the previous section it was stated that the end rotation ' of the beam-column simply was
equal to the rotation of the strain-plane. This is of course true given that the local coordi-
nate system for the beam-column coincides with the current orientation of the instantaneous
neutral axis dened through the angle . However, a description of the beam-column re-
sponse in an arbitrary oriented local coordinate system would be a very inecient approach
as it would require a complete solution of the beam-column problem for each dierent ori-
entation, i.e. for each angel .
From an ease of calculation point of view, it would be preferable to have a xed local reference
system for the beam-column in which the beam solution is performed. This has the advantage
that the solution only has to be performed once for each beam-column. Entertaining this
idea would require an analysis of how the end displacement and rotation ' transform
from the current strain-plane dened by the three parameters INA, , and into the local
reference system for the beam-column shown in Fig. A.2.
A.3.1 Eective Beam-Column End Rotation

The idea is to perform all evaluations of the beam-column response in the local reference
system shown in Fig. A.2. The rst thing to note is that the local reference system is rotated
by ,/2 compared to the global reference system shown in Fig. A.1. Thus, there will be a
swap of sign on the end displacement of the column and the corresponding axial load P
when moving from the global to the local reference system. Angles about the y-axis will
however remain unchanged.
A.3. Local Beam-Column Description 145
Figure A.3: Sketch of the transformation between the local beam-column reference
system, the global coordinate system, and the current strain-plane.
Thus, with respect to the magnitude of the end displacement of the column, this dierence
in orientation of the local and global reference system, really makes no dierence (except
for the sign) provided that the right local end rotation ' is used, and as long as the global
reference to the beam-column is equal to the position of the local origin of the beam-column.
Pertaining to the rst requirement, the local end rotation is given with respect to the horizon-
tal y-axis and bending of the beam-column is, from the local point of view, also perceived to
be about the horizontal axis. Thus, as the real axis about which the beam-column is exposed
to an end rotation, and subsequently also is bending about, most likely will be dierent form
the local horizontal axis, a description of the relation between these two axes is needed.
Addressing the handling of dierent initial orientation of each individual beam-column with
respect to the entire hull cross section rst, the angle between the global and local horizon-
tal axis is introduced as shown in Fig. A.3. The angle is dened as being between the global
horizontal y-axis and the positively oriented part of the local z-axis in the beam-column
reference system. The angle is thus positively oriented in the counter-clockwise direction as
shown in the sketch. With this denition, any orientation of the cross section of a beam-
column with respect to the total hull cross section is uniquely determinable. Further, the
maintained sign of the angle will ensure that the end rotation of the beam-column in the
local reference system will be perceived correctly. Hence, given a rotation of the strain-plane
about an instantaneous neutral axis rotated an angle with respect to the global horizon-
tal y-axis, then the corresponding eective end rotation of the beam-column about the local
y-axis dened through the angle , becomes
'e = cos( , ) (A.3)
directly derivable from Fig. A.3.
Thus, this is the angle for which the load-displacement response has to be established in the
case of and rotation of the strain-plane. Hence, the axial response force of the beam-column
then becomes
P (; 'e) = P (2; cos( , )) (A.4)
by means of which the position of the instantaneous neutral axis INA is determinable the
same way as in Eq. (A.2), i.e.
X
Pi (i; 'e;i) = 0 ; INA (A.5)
i ;
and the corresponding bending moment about the instantaneous neutral axis becomes
X
MINA = Pi (i; 'e;i) i (A.6)
i ;;INA
It should be noticed that with respect to the axial response force hereby obtained, then this
will also have to have the sign swapped just as the end displacement of the beam-column,
due to the opposite orientation of the local reference system in comparison with the global
system.
A.4 Summary
In conclusion it has been proven durable to model asymmetrical bending of the entire hull
cross section by means of the asymmetrical forced curvature principle. Further, the in-
troduction of a xed local reference system for each beam-column has been successfully
incorporated in the formulation.
With respect to this local reference system for the beam-columns, the introduced, opposite
oriented system may not seem the most logical choice, as this causes some signs to be
swapped. When rst introduced there really was made no argumentation for exactly such
a choice. Moreover, a system oriented the same way as the global reference system would
have eliminated such problems, so why not use that kind of system? The reason for this lies
within the formulation of the beam-column load-displacement response.
Here, the traditional way to orientate the coordinate system for a beam-column is such that
compressive loading yields positive axial loads and corresponding positive end displacements.
This because, for a column, the most interesting part of the response would be compression
A.4. Summary 147
due to the inherent stability problems in this region, and thereof following special solution
scheme used.
Therefore, to ease the derivation of the beam-column response, and the verication by com-
parison, the same orientation has been used in this study. However, to make the coding
of the global system analysis, the load-displacement curves are simply reversed to match
the global system, i.e. such that compressive forces are negative for negative displacements
and similarly tensile forces are positive for positive displacements. This is easily done, just
by swapping the sign of both forces and displacement once the load-displacement response
has been established consistently in the local reference system. As the orientation of the
end rotation of the beam-column is unaected by this, the transformed load-displacement is
directly usable in the overall system analysis of the entire hull cross section. This way, a lot
of possible confusion and possible coding errors is eectively removed yielding a much more
reliable procedure.

Appendix B
Solution to the Classical
Beam-Column Problem
B.1 Purpose & Objective
Figure B.1: Sign convention for the classical beam-column problem.

The classical beam-column problem, including imperfection, is shown in Fig. B.1. The
solution to this problem is well known, but for the purpose of consistency and thoroughness
the derivation will be repeated here. The interest is on the normal stress distribution xx (z)
at the middle of the beam-column under the following conditions:
The beam-column is loaded at the ends with the normal force P and laterally with the
uniformly distributed line load of magnitude q.
The rotations at the ends of the beam-column are prescribed equal to '.
The initial de ection of the beam-column is assumed to have the shape of one half sine
wave with an amplitude equal to w0.
The sectional properties (i.e. EI and A) are assumed constant and the length of the
beam-column is `.
149
150 Appendix B. Solution to the Classical Beam-Column Problem
B.2 Beam Dierential Equation

The initial de ection may be written as w0 sin x` which is seen to fulll the assumed bound-
ary conditions. Thus, as known form any standard textbook (See e.g. Gere and Timoshenko
[15]) the dierential equation of the beam-column may be formulated as
EI @ @x
4 w (x)
+ P @ 2 w(x) + w sin x = q ;
0
4 @x2 `
@ 4 w (x) @ 2 w(x) 2 x !
EI @x4 + P @x2 , w0 ` sin ` = q (B.1)
B.3 De ection Solution

The solution scheme for the dierential equation in Eq. (B.1) is simply to integrate twice
and apply the boundary conditions to determine the constants arising from the integration.
These boundary conditions are:
On the left hand side (x = 0)

{ Zero de ection, i.e. w(0) = 0
{ Prescribed end rotation, i.e. w0(0) = '
On the right hand side (x = `/2)
{ Zero end rotation, i.e. w0(`/2) = 0
{ Zero shear force, i.e. EIw000(`/2) = 0
By integration of Eq. (B.1) once, and applying the boundary condition at the right hand
side x = `/2 (the middle) of the beam-column, the following is obtained
x = `/2 ; 0
,, ! 9
@ = qx + C1 >
3 w (x) @w ( x) x
EI @x3 + P @x + w0 ` cos , ` >
>
, >
=
@w
Zero end rotation : @x = 0 (`/2)
>
>
; C1 = ,q `/2
>
>
@
Zero shear force : EI @x3 = 0
3 w (`/2) >
;
B.3. De ection Solution 151
Integrating once more yields
x 1
EI @x2 + P w(x) + w0 sin ` = 2 qx2 , q 2` x + C2
@ 2 w (x)
+ x qx2 q`x
EI @ @x
2 w (x)
2 + Pw (x ) = ,Pw 0 sin ` + 2 , 2 + C2
The solution to this dierential equation is well known to be
s
P
P > 0 : w(x) = C3 sin(x) + C4 cos(x) + wp (x) ; = EI
s
P < 0 : w(x) = C3 sinh(x) + C4 cosh(x) + wp(x) ; = ,EIP
which is the solution to the homogeneous equation plus a particular solution wp(x). For the
present case this particular solution is found to be
x
wp(x) = C5 sin ` + C6x2 + C7 x + C8
which by insertion into the dierential equation yields

@ 2 w (x)
p
x qx2 q`x
EI @x2 + Pwp(x) = ,Pw0 sin ` + 2 , 2 + C2
+ 2 x x
,C5 EI ` sin ` + 2C6EI + C5P sin ` + C6Px2 + C7 Px + C8P
x qx2 q`x
= ,Pw0 sin ` + 2 , 2 + C2 ; C6 = 2qP ; C7 = , 2q`P
2
Introducing the Euler load PE = ` EI , this further reduces to
qEI
C5(P , PE) sin x
` +
P + C8P = ,Pw0 sin x + C2
`
Pw 1 qEI
; C5 = P ,oP ; C8 = P C2 , P
E
Thus the particular solution rewrites to

x qx2 q`x C2 qEI
wp(x) = PPw
,P
o
sin ` + 2P , 2P + P , P 2
E
Considering rst the compressive part, i.e. P > 0 and applying the zero de ection at the
left hand side boundary condition yields
Pw 0
x
w(x) = C3 sin(x) + C4 cos(x) + P , P sin ` +
E

qx2 , q`x + C2 , EIq = 0 ; C + C2 , EIq = 0
2P 2P P P 2 x=0 4
P P2
Further, the prescribed end rotation at the left hand side, gives
Pw 0 x qx q`
w0(x) = C3 cos(x) , C4 sin(x) + P , P ` cos ` + 2 2P , 2P = '
E x=0
!
; C3 = 1 PPw 0
+ q` + ' A
, PE ` 2P
Finally, zero end rotation at the right hand side, gives
1

!0 *
0
0 ` q` = 0
w0(`/2) = C3 cos( `/2) , C4 sin( `/2) + PPw cos + 2q`
,
E, P ` 2` 4P 2P
; C3 cos( `/2) , C4 sin( `/2) = 0
+
C4 = C3 cot( `/2) = EIq
P 2 , C2
P
+
C4 = A cot( `/2) ; C2 = EIq
P , A cot( /2)P
`
With all the integration constants now determined by application of the boundary conditions,
the nal de ection then becomes
Pw 0
x
w(x) = A sin(x) + A cot( `/2) cos(x) +
PE , P sin ` +
qx2 , q`x + EIq , A cot( `/ ) , EIq
2
2P 2P P 2 P2
Pw 0
x
= A (sin(x) + cot( /2) cos(x)) +
P , P sin ` +
`
E
qx2
, q`x , A cot( `/ ) (B.2)
2
2P 2P
B.4. Sectional Moment 153
Performing the exact same derivation for the tensile part, i.e. P < 0 yields the de ection
x
w(x) = A (sinh(x) + coth( `/2) cosh(x)) + PPw
,P
0
sin ` +
E
qx2
, q`x + A coth( `/ ) (B.3)
2
2P 2P
B.4 Sectional Moment

From the de ection just found, the sectional moment can be established from
M (x) = @ 2 w(x) (B.4)
EI @x2
By insertion of Eqs. (B.2) and (B.3) into this dierential equation (Eq. (B.4)), and after
performing some rearranging, the moment, or rather M=EI , becomes
8 2 x q
>
> A 2 (sin(x) + cot( `/ ) cos(x)) + Pw0 sin ,P P >0
M ( x ) < 2
P E,P ` `
, EI = > 2 x q
> 2 (coth( `/ ) cosh(x) , sin(x)) + Pw0
: A 2
PE , P ` sin ` , P P < 0
Of special interest for the present investigation is the moment at the middle of the full
beam-column. This is now easily found as
1
" !
, ! #
M (`/2) = cos 2 ( `/2) Pw
,EI A sin( `/2) + sin( `/ ) + P , P ` sin,,2` , P
2 0 2 ` q
"
2
#
E
,
,EI sin(A `/ ) + PPw,0P ` , Pq
2 2
=
2 E
= EI2 A + PEPw0 + EIq
, sin( `/2) P , PE P
!
= EI
, sin( `/ ) P , P ` + 2P + ' + PPE,PwP0 + EIq
Pw 0 q`
P (B.5)
2 E E
for the compressive part of the loading (P > 0), and similarly as
!
M (`/2) = , EI Pw 0
+ + ' + PEPw0 + EIq
q` (B.6)
sinh( /2) P , PE ` 2P
` P , PE P
for the tensile part of the loading (P < 0).
B.5 Midspan Stress Distribution in Beam-Column
With the sectional moment known, the quantity sought to be established by this investiga-
tion, i.e. the normal stress distribution xx over the beam-column cross section, is obtainable
by application of Navier's equation1
xx(x; z) = , PA , MI(x) z (B.7)
By inserting the moment given in Eqs. (B.5) and (B.6) into Navier's equation Eq. (B.7), the
normal stress distribution at the middle of the beam-column (i.e. at x = `/2) is found to be
! 2
xx(z) P
=, + Ez Pw 0
+ + ' , 2 EPw0z , Eqz
q` (B.8)
x = `/2 A `(P , PE) 2P ` (P , PE) P
where
8 s
>
> P
< sin( `/2) ; = EI ; P > 0 (Compressive loading)
>
= > s
: sinh( `/2) ; = ,EIP ; P < 0 (Tensile loading)
>
2
Looking at this expression, the rst observation to be made is that it is undened for an
axial load P equal to zero. Actually no eort has been made to produce a solution for the
special case of zero axial loading. This is however not a real problem, since within in scope
of the current study, zero axial loading is really of no interest.
The use of the result in Eq. (B.8) is for the establishment of the load-displacement response
of a beam-column as outlined in Chapter 5. In this context, zero axial load is implicitly
understood to an initial safe situation of the beam-column in which the response of the
entire beam-column is linear elastic. That is, it is assumed that there will be a tensile
loading less than zero at which the the rst deviation from the linear elastic behavior will
occur. Similarly, there is assumed to be an compressive axial loading grater than zero up
until which the behavior also is linear elastic.
If this is not the case, the implication would be that the plate part of the beam-column will
be either yielding in tension or buckling in compression already in its initial state without any
1Formulated such that compressive loads (P > 0) yields negative stresses. This is done for reasons
pertinent to the way the plate part of the beam-column considered in this research later on will be treated.
B.5. Midspan Stress Distribution in Beam-Column 155
axial load applied. That would be in contradiction to the assumed initial safe condition of
the beam-column for an axial load equal to zero. Consequently, any beam-column exhibiting
this behavior would be discarded in the overall system analysis performed on the entire hull
cross section. Thus, it can be concluded, that the undened nature of Eq. (B.8) for an axial
load P equal to zero poses no limitation for the purpose at hand and can thus be ignored2.
The second observation to be made is that Eq. (B.8) also is undened for an axial load P
equal to the Euler load PE. Thus, at rst glance, it would seem that the buckling load would
be equal to the Euler load, indicating that the beam-column response is that of a simply
supported beam-column.
Nevertheless, even though the right-hand-side of Eq. (B.8) is undened for P = PE, the
expression has a limiting value for P ! PE. This can easily be seen by expanding the two
troublesome terms at P = PE, i.e.

Ez Pw0 , 2EPw0z (B.9)
sin( `/2) `(P , PE) `2(P , PE) P =PE
Now looking rst at the expression

s v
u 2
P u
t EI `
= EI
P =PE
; EI = ` (B.10)
leading to

Ez = Ez = Ez (B.11)
`
sin( /2) P =PE ` sin 2 `
Thus, at P = PE the two terms in Eq. (B.9) expands to
Ez Pw0 , 2EPw0z = 0 (B.12)

` `(P , PE) `2(P , PE)
which are seen to cancel out each other and thereby eliminating the apparent problem at a
load equal to the Euler load.
4
2 A solution is of course obtainable either by solving the dierential equation EI 4 = q(x) or simply by
@ w
nding the limiting value of the axial stress in Eq. (B.8) for P ! 0. The later can easily be done using
@x
xx
a successive Taylor expansion of the = sin( /2) term giving

`
Ez q`2 z
lim
!0 (z ) = ' +
xx
` / 24I
P 2
Figure B.2: Axial stress xx versus axial load P at the middle of a typical beam-column.
Thus, the real buckling load then becomes four times the Euler load, i.e. Pcr = 4PE, as the
denominator sin( `/2) then equals zero and the stress xx consequently escapes to innity.
This value is recognized as the classic value for a clamped beam-column, which corresponds
exactly to the assumed boundary conditions.
These conclusions can also be reached by observing the plot in Fig. B.2 where the axial stress
at the extreme ber of the ange in a typical ideal3 beam-column xx given by Eq. (B.8) is
shown as a function of the applied compressive axial load P . The plot clearly shows that
there is C0 continuity at the Euler load (P = PE), and that the stress escapes to innity
when approaching the critical compressive load of four times the Euler load (Pcr = 4PE).
Another obvious observation which can be made from the plot, is that the stress level for the
present beam-column is much higher than the yield stress (y = 359 MPa) long before the
Euler load is reached. This is however to be expected as the presented solution is based on
a linear-elastic model. Nevertheless, within the range of reasonable loads, the linear elastic
behavior will produce realistic results usable in the present study.
3By ideal is understood no initial imperfection (de ection) of the stiener (w0 = 0), no line load (q = 0),
and zero end rotation of the beam-column (' = 0).
B.6. Summary 157
B.6 Summary
In conclusion, a expression for the normal stress distribution xx over the beam-column
cross section have been established in Eq. (B.8). The behavior of the expression has further
been investigated and found to be in compliance with the assumed initial conditions for the
beam-column.
It can therefore be concluded that the obtained expression is indeed usable for application
within the linear elastic response range of the load-displacement behavior of the beam-
columns, both in tension and in compression.

Appendix C
Solution of the von Karman Equations
C.1 Purpose & Objective

When previously discussing the elastic compression region of the idealized beam-column
response in Chapter 5, the solution to the eigenvalue problem (cf. Eq. (5.28))
Dr4w , Nz w;zz , 2Nxz w;xz , Nxw;xx = 0 (C.1)
was requested. Moreover, the in-plane displacement pattern after buckling is given by the
following two equation (cf. Eqs. (5.29) and (5.30))

(2) + N (2) = , N (11) + N (11)

Nx;x xz;z x;x xz;z (C.2)

(2) + N (2) = , N (11) + N (11)

Nz;z xz;x z;z xz;x (C.3)
which also needs to be solved.

So far, all that has been stated about the solution of these two problems, is that it is done
in a numerical framework consisting of a nite dierence description and, for the eigenvalue
part, the inverse iteration method. The purpose of this appendix is to elaborate on how
this is done in the nite dierence framework, and further to present some ndings and
comparison of these with known results. The later being not only theoretical results, but
also experimental ndings.
159
160 Appendix C. Solution of the von Karman Equations
Figure C.1: Finite dierence approximation to the de ection w = f (x; z).

C.2 The Finite Dierence Method
In the nite dierence approach, the continuous function w = f (x; z) is discretized in M N
points as shown in Fig. C.1, which then constitutes the nite dierence approximation to the
function w. The idea is then to substitute the derivatives of the function w with dierence
in the discrete points (m; n) and thus, the method allows an ordinary dierential equation to
be replaced by an equivalent set of simultaneous linear algebraic equations with the function
values w1;1: : :wM;N as the unknowns1 .
Looking rst at the simplest case of dependency in only one variable, the derivatives stated
as central dierences at point k becomes,
1st derivative = (wk+1 , wk,1) =2h
2nd derivative = (wk+1 , 2wk + wk,1) =h2
3rd derivative = (wk+2 , 2wk+1 + 2wk,1 , wk,2) =2h3
4th derivative = (wk+1 , 4wk+1 + 6wk , 4wk,1 + wk,2) =h4
The expansion from this to two dimensions is obvious. However, for the problem at hand, be-
ing the plate equation, there is only two extra mixed derivatives that needs to be formulated.
Thus, for the purpose of consistency at point (i; k) these two are
r4w = (wi+2;k + 2wi+1;k+1 + 2wi+1;k,1 , 8wi+1;k , 8wi,1;k + wi,2;k + 20wi;k + wi;k+2
+2wi,1;k+1 + 2wi,1;k,1 , 8wi;k+1 , 8wi;k,1 + wi;k,2) =h4
@ 2 w = (w
i+1;k+1 + wi,1;k,1 , wi+1;k,1 , wi,1;k+1 ) =4h
2
@x@z
1 For further general reference on the nite dierence method see e.g. Mitchell and Griths [29], or
specically applied to structural mechanics, Murray [30] or Brush and Almroth [4]
C.3. Buckling Behavior 161
C.3 Buckling Behavior
The rst step in the analysis is to nd the critical buckling load. Utilizing the nite dierence
method, the eigenvalue problem in Eq. (C.1) can, applying central dierences, be written as
wi+2;j +2wi+1;j+1 + 2wi+1;j,1 , 8wi+1;j , 8wi,1;j
+wi,2;j + 20wi;j + wi;j+2 + 2wi,1;j+1
+2wi,1;j,1 , 8wi;j+1 , 8wi;j,1
+wi;j,2 = , h [,Nx (wi+1;j , 2wi;j + wi,1;j )
2
D
, 12 Nxz (wi+1;j+1 + wi,1;j,1 , wi+1;j,1 , wi,1;j+1)
,Nz (wi;j+1 , 2wi;j + wi;j,1)]
at point (i; j ) in the nite dierence grid. Alternatively, the same expression and be written
in the form of stencils as
+1 8
+2 ,8 +2 h 2>
<
+1 ,8 +20 ,8 +1 w = , D >,Nz +1 ,2 +1 w
+2 ,8 +2 :
+1
9
6x ,1 +1 +1 >=
, N2xz w , Nx ,2 w> (C.4)
- +1 ,1 +1 ;
z
As stated previously, the generalized eigenvalue problem can in matrix form be written as
(A , B) = 0 with being the eigenvector complemented by as the corresponding
eigenvalue. Thus, re-arranging Eq. (C.4) yields
0 1
B +1 CC
B
B +2 ,8 +2 1N
2 xz ,Nx , 21 Nxz CC
B
B +1 ,8 +20 h 2
,8 +1 , D ,Nz 2(Nx + Nz ) ,Nz CC w = 0 (C.5)
B
B CA
@ +2 ,8 +2 , 12 Nxz ,Nx 1N
2 xz
+1
with the same x-z-axis orientation as in Eq. (C.4). In this expression (Eq. (C.5)) the two
matrices A and B is easily recognized as the result of the two stencils in frame boxes set in
the entire calculation domain. Thus, all that is need now to solve the buckling problem is a
numerical solution scheme to the generalized eigenvalue problem.
C.3.1 Buckling Solution Scheme
The solution scheme is to apply the inverse iteration procedure which ensures that the
buckling load found is the lowest load (see e.g. Bathe and Wilson [2]). Following the previous
derived nite dierence description, the eigenvalue problem is formulated in matrix form as
(A , B) = 0 ) B = 1 A ) A,1B = 1 (C.6)
The algorithm for the inverse iteration procedure for the eigenvector then becomes
A?k = Bk,1 ) ?k = A,1Bk,1 (C.7)
k = ?k 1 (C.8)
k
where k is the numerically largest component in the ?k vector, i.e. in the kth approxima-
tion to the real eigenvector . Thus, the last step (Eq. (C.8)) in the algorithm is just a
normalization of the current approximation to the eigenvector. This is required for stability
when the inverse iteration procedure is used in a numerical framework.
Since the, say N , eigenvectors i constitutes an orthogonal basis in the N dimensional
space, it is possible to let the initial guess on the eigenvector w0 be given as a combination
of all these eigenvectors. That is,
X
N
w0 = Ci i (C.9)
i=1
which multiplied with the B matrix yields

X
N XN C !
i
Bw0 = CiBi = A i (C.10)
i=1 i=1 i
Thus, applying the algorithm in Eqs. (C.7) and (C.8) the rst approximation becomes
X !
Aw?1 = Bw0 = A
N C
i
1w =X N 1
i ) 1 C i i (C.11)
i=1 i 1 i=1 i
Similarly, the second approximation becomes
1 1w =X N 1 2
1 2 2 i=1 i i i
C (C.12)
Continuing this scheme to the kth approximation yields
1 1 ::: 1 w = X
N 1 k
1 2 k k i=1 i i i
C (C.13)
which re-writes to
Yk 1 ! 1 k 0 !k !k 1
w k= @C11 + C2 1 2 + : : : + CN 1 N A (C.14)
i=1 i 1 2 N
From this expression (Eq. (C.14)) is is observed that if 1 is the the numerically lowest
of all N eigenvalues, i.e. j1j < j2j < : : : < jN j, then the successive use of the inverse
iteration algorithm will cause wk to converge towards being proportional to 1 with k
converging towards 1. Alternatively the corresponding eigenvalue can be found by dividing
each component of wk,1 by the corresponding component of wk . All these fractions will
yield the same eigenvalue 1 , and thus if this approach is used selecting the fraction where
the wk component is numerically greatest is advisable as this will be the most accurate
numerical approximation to the eigenvalue.
The requirement that 1 is the the numerically lowest of all N eigenvalues, is fullled for all of
the present load cases, except for the pure shear load. In this case two numerically identical
solutions exists, namely Nxz;cr, which is terms of eigenvalues is equivalent to 1 = ,2 .
However, observing the regularity of the successive approximations, it is seen that in every
even iteration, i.e. k = 2; 4; : : :, the corresponding eigenvalue approximation is squared, thus
eliminating the problem of sign of the eigenvalue. Hence, in the case of pure shear loading,
the inverse iteration scheme can still be applied and the corresponding lowest eigenvalue
squared is found by dividing each component of the wk,2 by the corresponding component
of wk .
C.3.2 Implementation
The prerequisites for establishing a nite dierence solution to the buckling problem of a
plate eld is now available. However, one thing remains to be addressed, namely the bound-
ary conditions. For the out-of-plane de ection part, only one of the boundary conditions
described in detail previously in section 5.6.4 applies. That is, that the edges all are simply
supported, i.e.

wx = b/2 ; z = `/2 = 0 ; w;xxx = b/2 = 0 , and w;zz z = `/2 = 0
The general requirement of the nite dierence method for this fourth order problem would
be to introduce two ctitious nodes outside each of the edges of the calculation domain.
Figure C.2: Denition sketch of the plate eld as used in the nite dierence solution.
However, in the present case only one ctitious node is required, as the simply supported
boundary condition is a requirement to the second derivative of the de ection at the edge,
and this derivative requires only one node on each side of the edge.
Thus, limiting the nite dierence description to handle only square cells, the numerical
model of the plate eld becomes as illustrated in Fig. C.2. As shown, only one set of
ctitious nodes exist outside the calculation domain, i.e. the plate eld. The cell size is
h h, i.e. square, and the total size of the nite dierence grid is M N , width- and
length-wise respectively.
Therefore, following the nomenclature of the previously discussed eigenvalue solution scheme,
the stencils for the two matrices in (A , B) = 0 becomes
+1
+2 ,8 +2
A = +1 ,8 +20 ,8 +1 (C.15)
+2 ,8 +2
+1
h2 N , h2 N , h2 N
xz x
2D D 2D xz
, hD Nz 2Dh (Nx + Nz ) , hD Nz
2 2 2
B = (C.16)
, 2hD Nxz , hD Nx h2 N
2 2
2D xz
These two stencils are then set for all nodes except for the ones on the plate edges and the
ctitious nodes. These other nodes are used to apply the boundary conditions. In the gure
below to the right, the upper left-hand corner of the plate eld shown in Fig. C.2 is depicted
with the nite dierence nodes indicated. The nodes marked with are the ones where the
two stencils in Eqs. (C.15) and (C.16) are set. The remaining nodes marked with and
are the ones used to apply the boundary conditions.
The boundary condition is simply supported. To enforce this, the
equations for the nodes on the edges (marked with ) are used
to set the zero de ection condition, giving for e.g. node n the
equation wn = 0 and so forth. The remaining equations for each
of the ctitious nodes (marked with ) are used to set the rest of
the simply supported condition, i.e. that the second derivative
equals zero at the edge. Hence, the equation for e.g. node d
becomes wd = ,wl ; wd + wl = 0 and so forth along the edges
of the plate eld. For the nal four ctitious nodes in the corners
the requirement that the second derivative equals zero leads to the equation wa = wk ;
wa , wk = 0 in the case of the upper left-hand corner and like-wise for the other three
corners.
C.3.3 Buckling Coecients

The only remaining topic to address regarding the buckling analysis is then the in-plane load
description, i.e. Nx and Nz width- and length-wise respectively, and the shear load Nxz . In
the present analysis it is assumed that there is no transverse loading. That is, it is assumed
that Nx equals zero. That leaves only one direct and the shear component to be considered.
Therefore, introducing the direct/shear ratio Nz =Nxz = tan(') and applying a compressive
(i.e. negative) base load of
N = , b2D
2
; Nz = cos(')N ; and Nxz = sin(')N
then from the eigenvalue the classical buckling coecients becomes kz = cos(') and
kxz = sin('), relating the critical stresses as
2E t 2
z;cr = kz
12 (1 , 2 ) b
(C.17)
2E t 2
xz;cr = kxz 12 (1 , 2 ) b (C.18)
Hereby, all that is needed to perform an evaluation of the critical loading (i.e. z;cr and xz;cr)
of an arbitrary plate eld exposed to any direct/shear ratio ' is readily available.
C.3.4 Buckling Interaction in Combined Loading
To verify the numerical method three test cases have been solved. The geometric and
material properties for each of these three plate elds is given in Tab. C.1. The calculations
have been performed with a nite dierence cell size h = b=23 and twenty-one dierent
direct/shear ratios ' ranging from pure direct stress, over intermediate combined stresses,
to pure shear stress, have been investigated for each plate.
The resulting buckling modes (or de ection patterns) for these three plate elds is shown in
Fig. C.3, C.4, and C.5 for length over width ratios of 1.0, 1.5, and 3.0 respectively. However,
only half of the intermediate loading conditions have been used to limit the extensiveness of
the plots. Further, as the magnitude of the de ection is undetermined, a normalization has
been performed so that the maximum de ection numerically equals one.
To evaluate the obtained buckling modes, a prior description of the expected result would be
appropriate. By observing the buckling coecients for the two classical cases of pure direct
stress loading and pure shear stress loading shown in Figs. C.8 and C.9 it is noted that the
shift in the number of half-waves in the de ection pattern at buckling occurs at dierent
length over width ratios for the two load cases.
Generally, the shear loading has a stiening eect on the response of the plate eld and
thus the shift from e.g. one to two half-waves rst occurs at length over width ratios greater
than approximately 2.2, whereas for the pure direct stress load case the shift happens at
approximately 1.4. Consequently, it must be expected that a change in the number of half-
waves in the de ection pattern will change to a lower number for a given plate when the
load is varied from pure direct to pure shear loading.
From the de ection plots (Fig. C.3, C.4, and C.5) it is observed that the solution captures
the shift from the direct stress dominated buckling mode to a shear dominated mode with
one less half-wave in the de ection pattern. It it further seen that the buckling modes each
complies with the respective number of half-waves in the extreme load cases { being pure
direct and pure shear load { as can be read o Figs. C.8 and C.9 for the corresponding length
over width ratios (i.e. 1.0, 1.5, and 3.0 respectively).
Table C.1: Dimensions and material properties for the three test plates.
`=b = 1:0 `=b = 1:5 `=b = 3:0
Length (`) 1.0 m 1.5 m 3.0 m
Width (b) 1.0 m 1.0 m 1.0 m
Thickness (t) 5.5 mm 5.5 mm 5.5 mm
Young's modulus (E ) 205 GPa 205 GPa 205 GPa
Poisson's ratio ( ) 0.3 0.3 0.3
Yield stress (y ) 245 MPa 245 MPa 245 MPa
Figure C.3: Buckling modes for a length over width ratio `=b=1.0. (Nz =Nxz = tan(')).
Figure C.6: Critical buckling load (eigenvalue) for three dierent length over width ratios.
Figure C.7: Buckling interaction curves for three dierent length over width ratios.
Buckling coecient for simply supported plates (Adopted from Brush and Almroth [4])
Figure C.8: In-plane compressive loading. Figure C.9: In-plane shear loading.
(Adopted from [4, Fig. 3.8]) (Adopted from [4, Fig. 3.11])
Moving on to the buckling coecients obtained from the numerical solution, Fig. C.6 shows
the critical buckling load coecient (eigenvalue) for the three dierent plates as a function
of the direct/shear ratio dened as tan(') = Nz =Nxz . The same information is shown in
the form of the direct buckling coecient kz = cos(') versus the shear buckling coecient
kxz = sin(') in Fig. C.7. Note that in these plots the positive orientation of the reference
system has been swapped, such that compressive stresses now are positive. This is done to
obtain positive values for the eigenvalue and thereby also for the two buckling coecients,
which is the classical way to present these quantities.
Looking at the resulting eigenvalue plot for the plate with a length over width ratio of 1.5,
it is observed how the shift from a direct stress dominated buckling mode with two half-
waves to a shear stress dominated mode with only one half-wave results in a slightly reduced
continuation of the eigenvalue curve. It is also observed (easiest from Fig. C.7) that the
buckling coecients for the cases of both pure direct and pure shear stress, are in excellent
compliance with the result shown in Figs. C.8 and C.9 for all of the length over width ratios.
Consequently, based on all of these observation, it is concluded that the proposed method
adequately describes the buckling behavior. However, before leaving this topic and con-
tinuing with the post-buckling behavior, a nal interesting conclusion must be presented.
From the the classic buckling coecients shown in Figs. C.8 and C.9, the conclusion can be
drawn that for length over width ratios above six, the continuing behavior of the buckling
coecients becomes asymptotic constant.
Thus, for plate elds with very high length over width ratios the geometric extent of the
plate can be truncated to a length equal to six times the width of the plate. This is, for the
general case, an important observation, as it reduces the number of nodes needed for the
nite dierence approximation and thereby also the time resources needed for the solving of
the associated system of equations. However, for typical ship structures aspect ratios above
six for the stiened plate elds are rare, and the observation is therefore more of a general
simplication without real eect for the current project. Nevertheless, the truncation has
been implemented in the developed computer code.
C.4 Post-Buckling Behavior

To determine the collapse load of the plate eld, the next step in the solution procedure is
rst of all to determine whether or not the plate has residual load carrying capabilities after
buckling occurred. To evaluate this the collapse criterion is employed. The criterion was
dened as transgression of the yield stress by the mean von Mises stress along one of the
unloaded edges (i.e. along the length of the plate). Thus, the following in-equality
z;2 cr + 3xz;
2 > 2
cr y (C.19)
based on the critical buckling stresses can be formulated. If true, then the load carrying
capacity of the plate eld has been exhausted and the plate will have collapsed even before
buckling occurred. In this case the mean axial stress at collapse ac and mean shear stress
at collapse sc can be determined simply by scaling the yield stress as
ac = q y (C.20)
1 + 3 tan(')2
sc = q y tan(') 2 = ac tan(') (C.21)
1 + 3 tan(')
where tan(') = Nz =Nxz is the direct/shear ratio of the given in-plane loading. That is,
the collapse stresses are simply set to the right fractions of the yield stress such that the
corresponding von Mises stress will equal the yield stress i.e. collapse per denition.
On the other hand if the in-equality in Eq. (C.19) is false, then the plate will still have load
carrying capacity left after buckling occurred. In this case the post-buckling behavior of the
plate eld will then have to established to assess the collapse load of the plate.
The post-buckling behavior is governed by the force equilibrium expressed in the following
two equations

(2) + N (2) = , N (11) + N (11)

Nx;x xz;z x;x xz;z (C.22)

(2) + N (2) = , N (11) + N (11)

Nz;z xz;x z;z xz;x (C.23)
C.4. Post-Buckling Behavior 173
The right-hand-side of these two equations is given in terms of the buckling de ection w(1) .
Thus, after having solved the buckling problem the post-buckling in-plane displacements u(2)
and v(2) can be found by solving these two equations. With these in-plane displacements
known, the corresponding stresses in the post-buckling region can be determined, and the
collapse criterion can then be applied to obtain the collapse load of the plate. Looking at
the left-hand-side of Eqs. (C.22) and (C.23) the four terms expands to2
(2) =
Nx;x Et d nu(2) + v(2) o = K u(2) + v(2) (C.24)
(1 , 2 ) dx ;x ;z ;xx ;zx
(2) =
Nz;z Et d nv(2) + u(2) o = K v(2) + u(2) (C.25)
(1 , 2 ) dz ;z ;x ;zz ;xz
(2) =
Nxz;x Et d nv(2) + u(2) o = K v(2) + u(2) (C.26)
2(1 + ) dx ;x ;z T ;xx ;zx
(2) =
Nxz;z Et d nv(2) + u(2) o = K v(2) + u(2) (C.27)
2(1 + ) dz ;x ;z T ;xz ;zz
and thus, the left-hand-side of Eqs. (C.22) and (C.23) re-writes to

(2) + N (2) = K u(2) + v (2) + K v (2) + u(2)

Nx;x xz;z ;xx ;zx T ;xz ;zz (C.28)

(2) + N (2) = K v (2) + u(2) + K v (2) + u(2)

Nz;z xz;x ;zz ;xz T ;xx ;zx (C.29)
where
Et
K = (1 , and K Et
T=
)
2 2(1 + )
Expressed in the form of stencils Eq. (C.28) becomes

8
>
< +1 (2) K + KT ,1 +1 (2)
(2) + N (2)
Nx;x 1
= 2 >K ,2 u + v
xz;z h : +1 4 +1 ,1
9
6x
>
=
+KT +1 ,2 +1 u (2) (C.30)
- >
;
z
2 See further Eqs. (5.17) through (5.22) formulated when the perturbation expansion was previously
performed in Chapter 5.
and similarly for Eq. (C.29)
8
>
(2) + N (2)
Nz;z 1 <
= h2 >K +1 ,2 +1 v(2) + K + KT ,1 +1
u(2)
xz;x 4
: +1 ,1
9
6x +1 >
=
+KT ,2 v > (C.31)
(2)
- +1 ;
z
Looking at the right-hand-side of Eqs. (C.22) and (C.23) the four terms expand to
(11)
Nx;x = Et d w(1) 2 + w(1)2 = K w(1) w(1) + w(1) w(1) (C.32)
2(1 , 2 ) dx ;x ;z ;xx ;x ;zx ;z
(11) =
Nz;z Et d w(1)2 + w(1) 2 = K w(1)w(1) + w(1) w(1) (C.33)
2(1 , 2 ) dz ;z ;x ;zz ;z ;xz ;x
(11) =
Nxz;x Et d nw(1)w(1) o = K w(1) w(1) + w(1) w(1) (C.34)
2(1 + ) dx ;z ;x T ;zx ;x ;z ;xx
(11) =
Nxz;z Et d nw(1) w(1)o = K w(1)w(1) + w(1) w(1) (C.35)
2(1 + ) dz ;z ;x T ;zz ;x ;z ;xz
These derivatives of the de ection can all readily be determined in the nite dierence
formulation from the previously obtained buckling solution. Hence, the post-buckling equa-
tions for the in-plane displacements is now ready for implementation in the nite dierence
framework.
C.4.1 Post-Buckling Solution Scheme

Solution of the post-buckling problem is complicated by the fact that the collapse load
sought by the application of the perturbation technique enters the equation system through
the boundary conditions. This obstacle is overcome by utilizing the self-adjoint property of
the dierential operator in the previously solved eigenvalue problem3.
The solution to the problem presents it self, when realizing that the post-buckling in-plane
behavior of the plate as described by Eqs. (C.22) and (C.23) is linear with both the out-of-
plane de ection and the externally applied in-plane loading. Based on this observation, it
See further the initial discussion of the boundary conditions in Section 5.6.4, page 66 in Chapter 5 on
3
beam-columns in combined loading.
can be concluded that the post-buckling in-plane forces resulting from a combined in-plane
loading and out-of-plane de ection at a given perturbation (loading) parameter ", can be
decomposed into a sum of two parts: One proportional to the buckling de ection squared
and independent of the in-plane loading, and one proportional to the added in-plane post-
buckling load and independent of the de ection.
In other words, it can be concluded that the ratio between the in-plane forces resulting from
the out-of-plane de ection and in-plane loading respectively, will remain constant for any
given perturbation (loading) parameter ". This is where the self-adjoint property of the
dierential operator come into play, as the constant ratio between the in-plane forces arising
from the two load cases proves to be determinable by application of exactly this property.
Hence, the solution scheme then becomes a three step process:
First, the post-buckling in-plane behavior must be determined for two distinctively dierent
load cases: One with zero external in-plane loading, but with the previously obtained out-
of-plane de ection at buckling, normalized such that the absolute value of the maximum
de ection equals one, applied. The other case is where an external in-plane unit loading is
applied, but where the out-of-plane de ection equals zero.
This will result in two sets of in-plane displacements u and v. Based on these two solutions,
the constant ratio between the in-plane forces resulting from the out-of-plane de ection and
in-plane loading respectively can be determined by application of the self-adjoint property.
This task then becomes the second step from which the true in-plane displacements corre-
sponding to a unit loading can be determined.
The third and last step will then be to scale the unit load solution by means of the per-
turbation parameter " until collapse occurs as dened through the collapse criterion. This
will give the nal in-plane displacements at collapse. These can then be integrated along
the loaded edges yielding the mean stress level at collapse. The stress obtained this way is
equivalent with the collapse load and thus, the solution to the post-buckling behavior of the
plate is found and the process can be concluded.
C.4.2 Implementation
The implementation in the nite dierence framework is a straight forward process. It diers
slightly from the previously solved eigenvalue problem in being a set of two coupled equations
that needs to be solved simultaneously. The problem can be expressed in matrix form as
2 32 3 2 h (11) (11) i 3
, N + Nxz;z 7
4 [Au] [Av ] 5 4 [u] 5 = 64 h x;x i 5 (C.36)
[Bu] [Bv ] [v] , Nz;z
(11) + N (11)
xz;x
where the left-hand-side coecient matrix, expressed in the form of stencils, is made up of
the following four sub-matrices
K ,K , KT K + KT
Au = h12 KT ,2(K + KT ) KT ; Av = 41h2
K K + KT ,K , KT
,K , KT K + KT KT
Bu = 41h2 ; Bv = h12 K ,2(K + KT ) K
K + KT ,K , KT KT
Thus, the post-buckling problem has the size 2M 2N in the nite dierence formulation,
i.e. four times the size of the previous eigenvalue problem. The right-hand-side of Eq. (C.36)
will be dependent on the applied loading. At a rst glance, it seems only to depend on the
out-of-plane de ection w(1) at buckling. This is true in the sense that equation system as
written in Eq. (C.36) is for the plate behavior only. However, when the boundary conditions
are introduced in the system through the ctitious nodes, the right-hand-side becomes a
function also of the applied in-plane loading.
Boundary Conditions
Looking at the prescribed boundary conditions, one has already been used when the eigen-
value problem was formulated, namely the simply supported condition along the plate edges.
The remaining condition needed for the solution of the post-buckling problem can be divided
into two types: Those depending only on the displacements, and those which couples with
the applied loading.
Regarding the rst type, there are two boundary conditions which can be formulated solely
as functions of the two in-plane displacements, i.e. u and v. These are the required constant
shear stress along the plate edges and that the plate edges are required to remain straight.
The constant shear stress along the plate edges is equivalent to requiring that the rst
derivative of the shear strain equals zero at the edges of the plate. Thus, utilizing the
stress-strain relations, the requirement at the four edges becomes
w;xz )x = b/ = (v;xz + u;zz )x = b/ = 0

0
,
"xz;z = (v;xz + u;zz + w,;zz
0 2 2

)z = `/ = (v;xx + u;zx)z = `/ = 0
,
"xz;x = (v;xx + u;zx + w;zxw,;xx 2 2
where the derivatives of the out-of-plane de ection cancels out because of the assumed simple
support along the plate edges. Similarly, the required straight edges can be enforced by
requiring that the curvature of the in-plane displacement perpendicular to the edge equals
zero, i.e.

u;xxx = b/2 = 0 and v;zz z = `/2 = 0
Thus, there are eight requirements to set on four edges. This can be done as there are two
sets of equations for each node in the entire system { one set for the u-displacement and
one set for the v-displacement. The resulting equations are then set in each of the ctitious
nodes along the edges of the plate eld just as it was done for the previous eigenvalue
problem. Having done that, leaves two times four equations (one for each of the ctitious
corner nodes, cf. Fig. C.2) by which the boundary conditions whit coupled dependency on
the displacements and the applied loading can be enforced.
Looking rst at the direct in-plane load description, then the requirement is a given constant
uni-axial loading in the longitudinal direction of magnitude P and zero transverse loading.
The corresponding boundary conditions to these two requirements then becomes integral
equations which, when the stress-strain relations4 are inserted, takes the form
Z b/2

, b/2
N z dx = P ;
z = `/2
Z b/2 Z b/2 0
K ;x2 dx
K b (v;z + u;x) dx + 2 b w;z2 + ,w, =P
, /2 z = /2
` , /2 z = /2
`
for the uni-axial loading in the longitudinal direction and

Z `/2

, `/2
N x dz = 0 ;
x = b/2
Z `/2 Z `/2 0
K 2 + w,

2 dz
K ` (u;x + v;z ) dz + w ;x , ;z =0
, /2 x = /2
b 2 , `/2
x = /2
b
for the transverse loading. Here again, the simply supported boundary condition previously
enforced in the eigenvalue problem cancels out two of the four derivatives of the out-of-plane
de ection w.
Similarly for the shear loading, a constant shear force proportional to the direct in-plane load-
ing in the longitudinal direction by a factor of # is required. That is, after the direct/shear
2
These are the standard relations previously dened in Chapter 5 where the strains are " = v +
4
z ;z
w;z
2 ,
2
" = u + 2 , and " = v + u + w w .
x ;x
w;x
;xz ;x ;z ;z ;x
ratio ' was introduced in the solution of the eigenvalue problem, the applied shear loading
is required to by proportional by # = tan('). The equivalent boundary condition to this
requirement is also an integral equation. However, as the aspect ratio (`=b) of the plate is
not required to be equal to one, the boundary condition expands to two integral equations,
which when the stress-strain relations are inserted, takes the form
Z b/2

, b/2
N xz dx = #P ;
z = `/2
Z b/2 Z b/2 0
;x dx
KT b (v;x + u;z ) dx + KT b w;z,w, = tan(')P
, /2 z = `/2
, /2 z = `/2
for the transverse direction and

Z `/2

N xz dz = # b` P ;
, `/2
x = b/2
Z `/2 Z `/2 0
;z dz
KT ` (v;x + u;z ) dz + KT ` w;x,w, = tan(') `b P
, /2 x = b/2
, /2 x = b/2
for the longitudinal direction. Here the simply supported boundary condition completely
cancels out any dependency on the out-of-plane de ection.
It is through these four integral equations that the coupling between the in-plane displace-
ments and the applied loading arises. Referring back to the previously discussed solution
scheme for the post-buckling problem, the procedure was to solve the system for two dierent
types of loading: One with zero externally applied in-plane forces (i.e. P = 0) but with a
loading in the form of a normalized out-of-plane de ection in the shape of w(1) at buckling,
and one with zero out-of-plane de ection (i.e. w = 0) and an externally applied in-plane unit
force (i.e. P = 1). Thus, the right-hand-side of the post-buckling equation system will in
the two loading conditions depend only on either the out-of-plane de ection, or the in-plane
load P and corresponding direct/shear ratio '.
Implementation of these four integral equations can easily be done by application of standard
trapezoidal integration approximation. This will then give the remaining eight equations to
set in the ctitious corner nodes. Eight equations as each of the four integral equation is to
be evaluated at two edges. However, due to the symmetry of the problem, there is a choice
of substituting one of each of the equations with a kinematic boundary condition. That is,
because of the the symmetry each of the equations actually only needs to be set at one of the
edges it applies to. The restrain thereby freed, can the be used to set a kinematic restrain
instead which of course will have to be done for the system to remain solvable.
This has be used in the present implementation such that only the shear load condition at
x = b/2 is set at both the edges where it applies. The remaining three equations are only
set for one edge and instead the three kinematic boundary conditions
u = v = 0 at x = , b/2 and z = `/2

u=0 at x = , b/2 and z = `/2
are enforced. This way, only compression in the longitudinal direction will occur which is
the desired behavior of the plate eld derived from the assumption of no interaction between
adjacent beam-columns.
Thus, with all the necessary boundary condition dened, the two right-hand-sides corre-
sponding to the two loading scenarios can be established and the system can be solved for
the two in-plane displacement elds. Denoting the displacements corresponding to the zero
external force P = 0 and normalized unit de ection w(1) loading by a bar, i.e. u and v, and
the displacements corresponding to unit external force P = 1 and zero de ection loading
by a hat, i.e. u^ and v^, the real in-plane displacements corresponding to the combined true
loading can be found as
u~(2) = u(2) + P (2) u^(2) (C.37)

v~(2) = v(2) + P (2)v^(2) (C.38)
where the constant ratio P (2) between the two components is given as
Z h (1) (2) (11) (1) (2) (11) (1) i (1)
P (2) = , A Z h i
N^z(2) w;zz
(1) + 2N^ (2) w (1) + N^ (2) w (1) w (1) dA
xz ;xz x ;xx
A
which is the enforcement of the self-adjoint property that must be fullled by the solution
given the specied boundary conditions.
Collapse Identication

Having determined the in-plane displacement eld, the post-buckling collapse load can then
be found by application of the assumed collapse criterion i.e. that collapse occurs when the
mean von Mises stress v at the mid-plane of the plate along one of the unloaded edges
reaches the yield stress y . This leads to the following second order equation which can be
solved for the collapse perturbation (loading) parameter squared "2c
2
Ac "2c + Bc "2c + Cc = 0 (C.39)
where
Z `/2 2 2
Ac = 1` ` Nx(2) + Nx(11) + Nz(2) + Nz(11) , Nx(2) + Nx(11) Nz(2) + Nz(11) +
, /2
(2) (11) 2
3 Nxz + Nxz dz (C.40)
Z `/2 n
Bc = 1` ` 2Nz(0) Nz(2) + Nz(11) , Nz(0) Nx(2) + Nx(11) +
, /2
o
6Nxz(0) Nxz(2) + Nxz(11) dz (C.41)
Z `/2 n o
Cc = 1` ` Nz(0) 2 + 3Nxz(0) 2 dz , y2t2 (C.42)
, /2
in which the boundary condition stating zero transverse loading, i.e. Nx(0) = 0 has been
utilized and where Nz(0) = tz;cr and Nxz(0) = txz;cr, i.e. the buckling solution from the
eigenvalue problem.
Collapse Loading
When the collapse perturbation parameter "c has been determined, the post-buckling so-
lution is completed and the resulting collapse loading can easily be found. In the present
investigation three measures of stress at collapse are of interest. These are:
Mean axial edge stress at collapse

1 1 Z `/2
(2) (11)

ec = z;cr + t ` ` Nz + Nz dz "2 (C.43)
, /2 x = b/ c
2
Mean axial stress at collapse

1 1 Z b/2
(2) (11)

ac = z;cr + t b b Nz + Nz dx "2 (C.44)
, /2 z = `/ c
2
Mean shear stress at collapse

1 1 Z b/2
(2) (11)

sc = xz;cr + t b b Nxz + Nxz dx "2 (C.45)
, /2 z = `/ c 2
C.5. Verication of Collapse Criterion 181
Table C.2: Dimensions and material properties for the three test plates.
b=t = 60 b=t = 120 b=t = 180
Length (`) 1.0 m 1.0 m 1.0 m
Width (b) 1.0 m 1.0 m 1.0 m
Thickness (t) 16.67 mm 8.33 mm 5.56 mm
Young's modulus (E ) 205 GPa 205 GPa 205 GPa
Poisson's ratio ( ) 0.3 0.3 0.3
Yield stress (y ) 245 MPa 245 MPa 245 MPa
With these stress known, along with the critical stresses at buckling, all the information
about the plate behavior that is needed for the further establishment of the idealized load-
displacement behavior of the entire beam-column in the elastic compression region is avail-
able.
The object of the nite dierence description of the plate eld has thus been achieved.
However, it still remains to veried that the chosen collapse criterion is an adequate means
of identifying the ultimate collapse load of the plate eld.
C.5 Verication of Collapse Criterion

To verify the implemented collapse criterion a test case has been performed. The object of
the test was to see if the current implementation could reproduce the experimental nding re-
ported by Harding [19, Fig. 8.21]. From Harding, results in the form of interaction curves for
the collapse stress are available for a square plate eld with three dierent slenderness ratios
exposed to compression, tension and shear. However, as the present investigation is solely
concerned with the plate response in the elastic compression region, only the compression
and shear part is considered for comparison.
The dimensions and material properties for the plate is given in Tab. C.2 for each of the
three dierent slenderness ratios, b=t = 60, 120, and 180. Of these three, only b=t = 60
is really interesting for typical ship structures. Signicantly higher ratios, which indicates
thinner plates, are eectively ruled out by the need for the vessel to be in compliance with
the design codes set down by the classication societies. The reason for this requirement by
the class, is mainly to eliminate the possibility of elastic buckling of the plate elds, which
is in essence the consequence of selecting that low a slenderness of the plate, i.e. a relatively
thick plate.
Nevertheless, interaction curves for the collapse stress for all three slenderness ratios have
been calculated using the present implementation to allow for the most thorough assessment
Figure C.10: Collapse interaction curves for a square plate with three
dierent plate slenderness ratios.
(Experimental results adopted from Harding [19, Fig. 8.21]).
of the proposed collapse criterion. The hereby obtained interaction curves are shown together
with the experimental result in Fig. C.10.
The computed interaction curves are based on a nite dierence cell size h = b=23 and
fty-one dierent direct/shear ratios ' ranging from pure direct stress, over intermediate
combined stresses, to pure shear stress, have been investigated for each plate.
From the plot in Fig. C.10 it seems fair to conclude that the present collapse criterion,
based on the transgression of the von Mises stress at one of the unloaded edges, yields
a reasonably accurate approximation to the experimental ndings by Harding. Especially
when considering that the present collapse formulation in essence is build on a second order
perturbation expansion of the plate behavior beyond the singular perturbation point at the
critical buckling load.
With this in mind, it is quiet impressive that the parabolic post-critical approximation
manages to move the critical solution that close to the real behavior as found in the Harding
experiments. Just how much the critical load level is actually lifted is shown in Fig. C.11
where the normalized critical stress is plotted along with the normalized collapse stress found
by the present formulation.
C.5. Verication of Collapse Criterion 183
Figure C.11: Buckling and collapse interaction for a square plate eld with
three dierent slenderness ratios.
Note: Buckling interaction for b=t = 60 has been truncated.
An added post-critical load capacity in the order of approximately two times the critical load,
is predicted by the post-buckling solution for the two relatively slender plates (b=t = 120,
and 180). That the second order approximation then manages to describe the experimental
ndings is in the author's opinion very impressive and seriously promotes the present collapse
criterion as being indeed usable.
Even better compliance between the numerical solution and the experimental results might
perhaps be obtainable by the inclusion of higher order terms in the perturbation expansion
of the post-buckling behavior. However, as the computational work required to solve the
present second order approximation is already quiet extensive, the conclusion is that the
implemented solution procedure is suciently accurate for the purpose at hand.
Another observation that can be made from Fig. C.11 is the explanation of the discontinuity
at =y ' 0:85 for the plate with lowest slenderness ratio (b=t = 60). Evidently, this is
where the critical buckling load exactly equals the collapse load. Thus, for higher levels of
shear load the plate with this slenderness ratio will collapse even before the critical buckling
load is achieved. That is, the plate will not buckle before its load capacity is depleted.
This is in excellent accordance with the previously mentioned reasons for the classication
societies to require slenderness ratios in the range of b=t = 60 in their design codes to avoid
the possibility of elastic buckling of the plate elds in the hull construction.
C.6 Summary
Having established and veried the present solution to the von Karman equations, the fol-
lowing can be concluded: The application of the perturbation technique in combination with
a collapse criterion based on transgression of the von Mises stress at one of the unloaded
plate edges is indeed usable. Further, a numerical scheme based on the nite dierence
method has been outlined and proven suciently accurate in its ability to predict both the
buckling load, and the post-buckling collapse load, for the purpose at hand.
There are however two free parameters left to be decided on. These are the cell size h and the
number of dierent direct/shear ratios '. Both of these parameters has a strong in uence
both on the accuracy and on the rapidness of the procedure. A compromise between the
requirement of a speedy procedure and a very accurate solution thus has to be made.
In the results presented so far the cell size has been set to h = b=23. The number of
direct/shear ratios ' has been twenty-one in the buckling investigation and fty-one in the
collapse load analyzes.
Looking rst at the cell size, then numerical experimentation with dierent numbers of cells
along the width of the plate has been carried out. First of all, the number has to be at least
ve because of the need for two times two ctitious nodes outside the boundaries of the real
physical plate. Thus, ve would mean that only one cell is used describe the actual plate
eld. This is of course the theoretical minimum cell size and is not applicable at all.
On the other hand, the upper limit for the number of cells is really dictated by the memory
requirements for holding the dierent matrices in the computer code. In the present imple-
mentation with 23 cells along the width of the plate a total of some 170 MB of memory is
allocated for the entire plate solution procedure of which by far the majority is used to hold
the matrices. This even though the sparseness of the matrices has been used to minimize
memory requirements.
Regarding the accuracy associated with the dierent cell sizes. As expected the accuracy
increases with higher and higher number of cells, all the way until around twenty. Above
this level of plate partitioning, there is no longer any signicant increase in accuracy. Con-
sequently, it has been decided to maintain the current level of cells by setting the cell size
to h = b=23. It is noted however, that this choice is based more on accuracy than on speed.
If speed is really of the utmost concern, the a number as low at twelve to fteen yields
acceptable accuracy at a much better performance rate of the code.
C.6. Summary 185
With respect to the number of direct/shear ratios ', then looking rst at the collapse in-
teraction curves in Fig. C.10, which has been produced for a total of fty-one direct/shear
ratios, it can be seen that this high a number of ratios is almost overkill. The produced
curve is practically totally smooth which is a far better representation than actually needed.
Looking then at the buckling coecients presented in Fig. C.7, where the level of discretiza-
tion is set to twenty-one direct/shear ratios, these also produce very smooth curves. Still
much better that actually needed.
A number of dierent settings for the direct/shear ratios has therefore been tried, and the
conclusion on these numerical experiments has been that eleven direct/shear ratios repre-
sents an acceptable level of accuracy. This number has then been chosen as the number of
direct/shear ratios which will be used in the following investigations performed in this study.

Appendix D
Alternative Modeling of the Idealized
Beam-Column Behavior
D.1 Purpose & Objective
An alternative approach to obtaining the the idealized beam-column load-de ection response
would be to perform a full numerical solution to the dierential equation governing the beam-
column. That is, to simply solve for the axial response for any requested end displacement
of a beam-column, instead of the present solution scheme developed in Chapter 5, where the
idealized load-displacement response is rst build for each beam-column, and then by means
of simple interpolation in these load-displacement curves, the axial response to a specied
end displacement is obtained.
The benet of the direct calculation approach would be that a large number of special
cases, each with its on specialized solution, would be replaced by one rational and consistent
solution valid in the entire response range from tensile plastic behavior to post-ultimate
compressive behavior. Obviously, this would make the procedure much more reliable, as the
need to consider each special case, with the possibility of missing one, would be avoided.
D.2 Basic Idea

The idea is to assume an idealized stress-strain relation for the stiener and plate part of the
beam-column as shown in Fig. D.1. For the stiener part, the assumption is linear elastic,
ideal plastic behavior. Thus, the stress will vary linearly up until the yield stress y,s for the
stiener is reached, both in tension and in compression. Thereafter, the stress will, for any
further straining, remain constant equal to the yield stress, i.e. the ideal plastic behavior
assumed.
187
188 Appendix D. Alternative Modeling of the Idealized Beam-Column Behavior
Figure D.1: Assumed stress-strain relation for the stiener and plate part
of the beam-column respectively.
For the plate part the assumed stress-strain relation is a bit dierent, as the response is
complicated by the buckling behavior of the plate prior to compressive collapse. Further,
the possibility of shear stresses present in the plate, also changes the behavior. The overall
assumption is however still linear elastic, ideal plastic as for the stiener. For the tensile
part of the response, linear behavior is assumed up until the tensile yield capacity tc for
the plate is reached. This will if shear stresses are present, be at a stress level which is lower
than the direct yield stress for the plate y,p .
In the compressive range, the behavior is assumed linear up until the critical buckling stress
cr is reached. Thereafter, the stiness is reduce to half the initial stiness, i.e. the tangent
modulus is assumed equal to half Young's modulus (Et = 1/2E ). This linear response then
continues until nal collapse of the plate is reached at ac . Beyond this, the compressive
behavior is assumed ideal plastic. Thus, further straining of the plate will happen at the
constant stress level ac .
The governing equation for the beam-column is traditionally expressed in terms of bend-
ing moments and axial forces. If this was changed to be in stresses and strains, then the
solution would be straight forward as this behavior is known. However, the re-writing to
stresses and strains is not possible. Nevertheless, it is possible to obtain a governing equa-
tion expressed in a combination of moment/forces and curvature/strains, within a numerical
solution procedure.
The scheme is then, that with the stress-strain relation known for both the stiener and
plate part of a beam-column, then a given combination of bending moment M and axial
force P at a given position along the length of the beam-column, can be made equivalent
with a corresponding curvature and axial strain ".
D.3. The Beam Dierential Equation 189
Figure D.2: Simple beam model of one beam-column.
Thus, by using this scheme to solve the beam equation, the solution would be valid in the
entire range of the response. Because, by doing it this way around, then the moments M and
axial forces P would automatically re ect the assumed stress-strain behavior of the beam-
column, i.e. eects such as the reduced stiness of the plate after buckling and plasticity
would automatically be included in the modeling.
D.3 The Beam Dierential Equation

Let the sign convention be as shown in Fig. D.2, then the standard beam dierential equation
which can be found in any textbook on the subject of beams (See e.g. Gere and Timoshenko
[15]) may be re-written as the following set of ve ordinary dierential equations (ODE's)
formulated in the curvature and strain " of the beam
dQ(x) = ,q(x)
dx
dM (x) = Q , P
dx 8 x
>
< u0(x) = w0 sin `
d (x) = , , d u0(2x)
2
;
dx dx : d` = 1 , q 2 + 1
>
du(x) =
dx
dv(x) = d` + "
dx
where an initial sinusoidal de ection u0(x) has been assumed, d` is the end-shortening, and
is the instantaneous rotation of the beam.
Table D.1: Geometric and material properties for the test beam-column.
Geometric properties:
Plate width : 300 mm
Plate thickness : 6 mm
Web height : 69.85 mm
Web thickness : 4.445mm
Flange width : 25.4 mm
Flange thickness : 6.35 mm
Material properties:
Young's modulus : 207 GPa
Yield stress : 359 MPa
D.4 Solution Method

In a numerical framework, this system of equations can be solved by the standard Runge-
Kutta method, given that a relation between the current combination of moment M and
axial force P , and the corresponding curvature and strain " combination, is known. Such
a relation can easily be established numerically by application of a simple iterative scheme
when the stress-strain relations are known. Thus, all the requirements for solving the beam
equation is now present.
To test if this will work in practice, a computer code has been written implementing this
scheme, and the procedure has been applied to a test beam. The properties for the test
beam are listed in Tab. D.1. The result hereby obtained is shown in Fig. D.3 in comparison
with the result obtained by the existing procedure described in Chapter 5. Only results
for the compressive region of the response is presented in the gure, as this is the most
interesting part of the response to base the evaluation of the new procedure on. However,
before commenting on the obtained results, a short description of the problems encountered
while performing the new solution procedure will be presented.
The application of the Runge-Kutta method, means that the system of equations is formu-
lated as an initial value problem, which is sought solved by a shooting method. That is, a
guess on the condition in one end of the beam is set, and the system of equations is the used
to calculated the resulting condition arising in the other end of the beam. This result is then
compared with what the condition is known to be (the boundary conditions) and iteration
is performed until convergence is obtained. However, when the behavior of the system of
equations becomes nonlinear, obtaining a new guess proved to be very troublesome. A wide
array of error corrective measures was therefore include in the solution procedure, eventually
allowing for the solution of the system of equations to be obtained. Further, the assumed
ideal plastic behavior had to be changed to a tangent stiness of one-thousand of the Young's
modulus for numerical reasons.
D.5. Summary 191
Figure D.3: Load-displacement curves for test beam-column.
D.5 Summary
Observing the results presented in Fig. D.3 it is seen that the comparison between the two
solution procedures is very good right up until just after the ultimate compressive load
is reached. At this point the new solution starts to deviate, predicting a slower rate of
unloading. Also at this point, the accuracy of the new solution starts to decrease (numerically
increase). That is, convergence starts to prove impossible to obtain, and nally when the
new solutions stops at approximately 2:5 mm of end displacement the new procedure totally
fails.
This problem of convergence may have been solvable by ne-tuning the iteration procedure.
However, the computational time spend by the new solution procedure was at this point
in the order of ve hours, whereas the existing procedure was performed in less than half
a second for the comparatively same task. Consequently, as speed is one of the primary
concerns in the current study, any further development on the new solution procedure was
deemed in vain, and thus the procedure has been abandoned as unusable within the context
of the present research.

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List of Figures
2.1 Plot of the calculated and measured moment-curvature relations for the 1/3-
scale frigate test specimen investigated for ultimate and post-ultimate capac-
ity of the hull by Technical Committee III.1 of ISSC'94 [11]. A total of ten
calculations are shown in comparison with the experimental result. . . . . . . 12
3.1 Geometry of the laser welded panel test specimen as reported by Dow [9]. The
panel is an orthogonally stiened grillage approximately 3300 mm in total
length by 1250 mm in total width, which was investigated by the Technical
Committee III.1 of ISSC'97 [12], with the purpose of benchmarking numerical
predictions of the ultimate and post-ultimate capacity against experimental
results. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
3.2 Graphical representation of the initial geometric imperfections present in the
same laser welded panel as in Fig. 3.1. The presentation is based on values
taken from Dow [9]. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
3.3 Plot of the calculated and measured non-dimensionalized, axial stress-strain
relationships for the laser welded panel investigated by the Technical Com-
mittee III.1 of ISSC'97 [12]. A total of fteen calculations are shown in com-
parison with the experimental result and the linear elastic slope. . . . . . . . 25
3.4 Plot of the same data as in Fig. 3.3. That is, a plot of the calculated and
measured non-dimensionalized, axial stress-strain relationships for the laser
welded panel { But only for results obtained using either the beam-column
approach or the idealized structural unit method. A total of three beam-
column results and one idealized structural unit method result is shown in
comparison with the experimental result. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
4.1 Sketch illustrating how the hull cross section is idealized in the beam-column
approach by decomposition into a number of discrete members, all of which
with an assumed beam-column response. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
199
200 List of Figures
4.2 Sketch illustration the sign denition for the sectional forces action on the hull
cross section. The sectional forces considered are: Moment and shear { both
horizontal and vertical, and further also torsional with respect to the moment
load. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
4.3 Graphical representation of the calculated shear stress distribution in a typ-
ical double hull tanker structure subjected to a unit load of: Vertical shear
force (top left), horizontal shear force (top right), St. Venant torsional mo-
ment (bottom left), and warping torsional moment (bottom right). The gure
illustrates that when exposed to a shear causing loading, by far the major part
of the resulting shear stresses are acting on the plating of the hull. . . . . . . 36
4.4 Sketch illustrating the forced curvature principle used for the overall system
analysis of the entire hull cross section. The loading is restricted to the the
simple case of pure horizontal bending given a constant shear stress level. . . 40
4.5 Sketch illustrating the orientation of the local beam-column reference coordi-
nate system. The coordinate system has its origin located at the intersection
point between the plate and the web of the stiener. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
4.6 Sketch illustrating the denition of the local beam-column reference system
in relation to both the global coordinate system of the hull cross section, and
the orientation of the instantaneous neutral axis and the strain-plane in the
case of pure horizontal bending. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
4.7 Sketch illustrating the forced curvature principle extended to asymmetrical
bending. The loading is the full ve component load condition as illustrated
in Fig. 4.2 where the the three shear stress causing forces are equated by
a constant shear stress and the asymmetrical bending moment equates the
remaining two moments. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
4.8 Plane sketch of the the forced curvature principle with asymmetrical bending,
i.e. for the same conditions as in Fig. 4.7. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
4.9 Sketch of a typical moment-curvature response curve. The sketch further
shows the denition of the two response condition, i.e. sagging and hogging,
graphically along with the denition of the curvature . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
5.1 Graphical illustration of the assumed idealized stress-strain curve for a single
beam-column. The behavior of the beam-column is subdivided into four char-
acteristic regions being: Plastic tension, elastic tension, elastic compression,
and plastic compression (unloading). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
5.2 Graphical illustration of an initially perfectly at, square plate subjected to
in-plane loading. Denition of sign convention is further shown. . . . . . . . 62
List of Figures 201
5.3 Graphical presentation of the buckling interaction for three similar plates, but
with dierent length over width ratios (`=b), these being 1.0 (i.e. square), 1.5,
and 3.0. See further Fig. C.7. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
5.4 Graphical presentation of the collapse interaction at dierent direct/shear load
ratios for a square plate eld. Curves are shown for three plate slenderness
ratios (b=t = 60, 120, and 180) along with experimental results adopted from
Harding [19]. See further Fig. C.10. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
5.5 Sketch showing the assumed conguration of the three plastic hinge mecha-
nism used to describe the post-ultimate compressive behavior of one beam-
column. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
5.6 Sketch of the plastic hinge force equilibrium with the used sign convention
shown. Further shown is the two cross sections in the beam-column at the
plastic hinge locations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
5.7 Sketch showing the assumed displacement behavior of the plastic hinge mech-
anism with the elastic displacement and de ection at collapse interpreted as
initial conditions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
5.8 Graphical presentation of eleven load-displacement curves which demonstrate
the eect of dierent shear stress levels in the plate part of the beam-column.
Curves are shown for zero through full yield shear stress y in steps of ten
percent. Further, the curves for zero, fty percent, and full yield shear stress
have been highlighted in the plot. Finally, also the dimensions for the beam-
column are shown in the gure. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
5.9 Sketch showing the assumed overall buckling mechanism describing the post-
ultimate region of the unstiened plate response. The model includes the
in-plane axial load P , and the lateral pressure q. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
5.10 Sketch of the local straight edge (multiple) folding mechanism for the post-
ultimate behavior of an in-plane loaded, unstiened plate eld. The mecha-
nism is adopted from Kierkegaard [23]. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
5.11 Graphical presentation of the compressive post-ultimate (unloading) load-
displacement curves for an unstiened plate eld. Results are shown for two
dierent plastic mechanisms: One based on an assumed overall buckling mode,
and one based on a local straight edge (multiple) folding mechanism adopted
from Kierkegaard [23]. The linear elastic - ideal plastic behavior is further
shown along with the mean crushing force as predicted by the straight edge
local folding mechanism. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
202 List of Figures
6.1 Sketch of the four cross section tested by Nishihara [31]. The cross sections
are all rectangular of some 720 720 mm and are made to simulate the typical
conventional ship types, being tankers (single skin and double bottom), bulk
carriers, and container carriers. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
6.2 Sketch of the Nishihara box girder simulating a single skin tanker structure.
Principal dimensions are shown (top) along with the idealized beam-column
model (bottom) of the same structure. Further, The material properties are
further listed in Tab. 6.1. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
6.3 Graphical presentation of the calculated moment-curvature relations for the
Nishihara box girder simulating a single skin tanker structure. Three dierent
levels of imperfection are presented: Perfect, stiener imperfection inwards,
and outwards from the center of the cross section. Whit respect to the sti-
ener imperfection then this is only present in the deck part of the structure.
Further, experimental data from [31] and by Melchior Hansen [17] are shown. 97
6.4 Graphical presentation of the calculated moment-curvature relations for the
Nishihara box girder simulating a single skin tanker structure. Results are
presented for four dierent orientations of the instantaneous neutral axis
(INA), being 0o (horizontal), 45o, 90o (vertical), and 135o. . . . . . . . . . . 99
6.5 Sketch of the midship section of the double hull tanker structure analyzed in
combined loading of moment and shear by Melchior Hansen [17]. Principal
dimensions for the tanker vessel are listed in Tab. 6.4. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102
6.6 Graphical presentation of the moment-curvature response for bending of the
midship section of the double hull tanker shown in Fig. 6.5 about the hori-
zontal axis. The response is shown for eleven cases of vertical shear loading
ranging from non to ultimate shear capacity. Further, the rst yield moment
along with the plastic moment of the cross section is indicated in the plot. . 104
6.7 Plot of the moment-shear interaction at ultimate capacity of the midship
section of the double hull tanker shown in Fig. 6.5. That is, the ultimate
moment capacity in both hogging and sagging condition versus the vertical
shear force. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105
7.1 Prole sketch of the 360,000 deadweight tons, double hull Ultra Large Crude
Carrier (ULCC) used as test case to demonstrate the present procedure. The
principal dimensions are given in Tab. 7.1 and Fig. 7.2 shows the structural
layout of the midship section. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110
7.2 Graphical presentation of the midship section for the 360,000 deadweight tons,
double hull Ultra Large Crude Carrier (ULCC). Further, dimensions of the
longitudinal stiening is shown. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
List of Figures 203
7.3 Graphical illustration of the predicted moment-curvature responses for the
ultra large crude carrier in its intact, as-build condition. The response is
shown for eleven dierent levels of vertical shear force, ranging from zero to
ultimate shear capacity. Further shown are the rst yield moment and the
plastic moment. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
7.4 Graphical presentation of the interaction between the vertical shear force and
the ultimate moment about the instantaneous neutral axis for the ultra large
crude carrier in its intact, as-build condition. The interaction is shown for
dierent orientations of the instantaneous neutral axis between 0 and 180
degrees. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114
7.5 Plot of the interaction between the vertical shear force and the ultimate mo-
ment about the instantaneous neutral oriented at zero degrees (horizontal),
forty-ve degrees, and ninety degrees (vertical). Further, the ultimate vertical
shear force capacity is indicated in the plot. The plot is for the ultra large
crude carrier in its intact, as-build condition. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115
7.6 Plot of the interaction between the ultimate bending moment about the verti-
cal and horizontal axis, i.e. My;u versus Mz;u, for the ultra large crude carrier
in its intact, as-build condition. Interactions curves are shown for ve dier-
ent levels of vertical shear force loading, being zero, one-quarter, half, three-
quarters, and full ultimate shear force Qz;u. The two remaining load compo-
nents, i.e. horizontal shear force Qy and torsional moment Mx are both zero
in the presented case. Further shown in the plot is the response as predicted by
the interaction formula
!2
Mz +k My =1
Mz,u My,u
i.e. a parabolic t, proposed by Mansour et al. [26]. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116
in its intact, as-build condition. The data plotted are the same as in Fig. 7.6.
However, in the present plot the the response as predicted by the interaction
formula
!1 !2
My + MMz =1
My,u z,u
is shown. The powers 1 and 2 entering the formula have been numerically
tted to 1 = 1:95 and 2 = 3:66. The present formula is presented as an
alternative to the one proposed by Mansour et al. [26]. . . . . . . . . . . . . 120
204 List of Figures
7.8 Sketch of the pressure distribution on the ULCC midship section in ballast
condition. The draught in this condition is 11:3 m. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121
ultra large crude carrier in its ballast condition, i.e. at a draught of 11:30 m.
The response is shown for eleven dierent levels of vertical shear force, ranging
from zero to ultimate shear capacity. Further shown are the rst yield moment
and the plastic moment. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122
in the ballast condition. Interactions curves are shown for ve dierent levels
of vertical shear loading, being zero, one-quarter, half, three-quarters, and
full ultimate shear capacity u . The shear loading is assumed to be a vertical
shear force only. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123
7.11 Graphical presentation of the bottom damage suered by a single skin VLCC
after grounding at Bualo Reef o Singapore on January 6th 1975. The gure
is adopted from Kuroiwa [25]. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125
7.12 Sketch of the ctitious bottom damage to the ULCC midship section. The
vertical extent of the damage is assumed below the inner bottom of the 3 m
high double bottom. The horizontal extent has been judged based on a real
grounding scenario of a single skin VLCC reported by Kuroiwa [25] (see sketch
in Fig. 7.11). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126
ultra large crude carrier in the ctitious grounding condition. The response is
shown for eleven dierent levels of total shear, ranging from zero to ultimate
shear capacity. The total shear loading is assumed to be a uniform scaling
of all the three shear stress distributions arising from vertical and horizontal
shear forces, and form the St. Venant torsion. Further shown are the rst
yield moment and the plastic moment. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
in the assumed grounding condition. Interactions curves are shown for ve
dierent levels of vertical shear loading, being zero, one-quarter, half, three-
quarters, and full ultimate shear capacity u . The shear loading is assumed
to be a uniform scaling of all the three shear stress distributions arising from
vertical and horizontal shear forces, and form the St. Venant torsion. . . . . 128
7.15 Sketch of the assumed temperature distribution in the midship section of the
ultra large crude carrier during a ctitious re in the right wing cargo tank.
In the three indicated zones, the modulus of elasticity and the yield stress are
assumed reduced according to the fractions listed in table Tab. 7.6. . . . . . 129
List of Figures 205
7.16 Graphical illustration of the predicted moment-curvature responses for the ul-
tra large crude carrier in the ctitious re / explosion condition. The response
is shown for eleven dierent levels of total shear, ranging from zero to ultimate
shear capacity. The total shear loading is assumed to be a uniform scaling
of all the three shear stress distributions arising from vertical and horizontal
shear forces, and form the St. Venant torsion. Further shown are the rst
yield moment and the plastic moment. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131
in the assumed re / explosion condition. Interactions curves are shown for
ve dierent levels of vertical shear loading, being zero, one-quarter, half,
three-quarters, and full ultimate shear capacity u . The shear loading is as-
sumed to be a uniform scaling of all the three shear stress distributions arising
from vertical and horizontal shear forces, and form the St. Venant torsion. . 132
7.18 Comparative plot of the moment-curvature response for the ultra large crude
carrier as predicted by the present procedure in the four conditions investi-
gated. These four conditions are:
Intact, as-build condition
Ballast condition
Grounding damage condition
Fire/explosion damage
for which the moment-curvature response in pure bending and at ultimate
shear capacity is shown. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134
7.19 Comparative plot of the moment interaction for the ultra large crude carrier
as predicted by the present procedure in the four conditions investigated (see
Fig. 7.18 above). The interaction is shown for the case of pure bending and
for the ultimate shear capacity. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135
A.1 Plane geometric denition sketch of the asymmetrical forced curvature princi-
ple used to perform the global system analysis of the entire hull cross section.
For the purpose of clarity, the sketch is made for a simplied box shaped hull
cross section. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142
A.2 Sketch illustrating the orientation of the local beam-column reference coordi-
nate system. The coordinate system has its origin located at the intersection
point between the plate and the web of the stiener. (Same as Fig. 4.5.) . . 144
A.3 Sketch illustrating the denition of the local beam-column reference system
in relation to both the global coordinate system of the hull cross section, and
the orientation of the instantaneous neutral axis and the strain-plane. . . . . 145
206 List of Figures
B.1 Sketch of the classical beam-column problem including initial imperfection,
with the dened sign convention indicated. The loading is dened by a normal
force at the ends and a uniformly distributed line load along the length of the
beam-column. The initial imperfection is taken as one half sine wave, and the
ends of the beam-column are subjected to a prescribed rotation. . . . . . . . 149
B.2 Plot of the the cross sectional axial stress at the middle of a typical beam-
column as a function of the applied compressive load. The stress is based on
a linear-elastic solution to the standard beam dierential equation. . . . . . . 156
C.1 Graphical illustration of the nite dierence approximation to the de ection

of a plate eld showing the used coordinate system along with the convention
for subdivision into cells. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160
C.2 Denition sketch of the plate eld showing the used coordinate system along
with the convention for subdivision into cells. Also, ctitious nodes as opposed
to \real" nodes are indicated along with the grid size. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164
C.3 Graphical presentation of the buckling modes (de ection pattern) at dierent
loadings ranging from pure direct stress, over intermediate combined loadings
dened through Nz =Nxz = tan('), to pure shear stress. All for a plate eld
with a length over width ratio (`=b) equal to 1.0 (i.e. square). The dimensions
and material properties for plate is given in Tab. C.1. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167
C.4 Graphical presentation of the buckling modes at the same loadings as in

Fig. C.3, but here for a plate eld with a length over width ratio (`=b) equal
to 1.5. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168
C.5 Graphical presentation of the buckling modes at the same loadings as in

Fig. C.3, but here for a plate eld with a length over width ratio (`=b) equal
to 3.0. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169
C.6 Graphical presentation of the critical buckling load (or rather, the eigenvalue)
for three similar plates, but with dierent length over width ratios (`=b), these
being 1.0 (i.e. square), 1.5, and 3.0. The dimensions and material properties
for the three plates are given in Tab. C.1. The eigenvalues are plotted for dif-
ferent ratios of direct versus shear loading, dened through Nz =Nxz = tan(').
Hence, a direct/shear ratio ' of zero equals pure direct loading, and like wise
a ratio of ninety degrees equals pure shear loading. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170
List of Figures 207
C.7 Graphical presentation of the buckling interaction for the same three plates
with dierent length over width ratios as in Fig. C.6. The critical load is de-
ned as
2E t 2
cr = k 12 (1 , 2 ) b
where k is one of the classical buckling coecients i.e. kz for direct load and
kxz for shear load. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170
C.8 Plot of the classic buckling coecient kc for simply supported plates subjected
to in-plane compressive loading. Values are shown for length over width ratios
(`=b) in the range one-half to ve. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171
C.9 Plot of the classic buckling coecient ks for simply supported plates subjected
to in-plane shear loading. Values are shown for length over width ratios (`=b)
in the range one to ve. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171
C.10 Graphical presentation of the collapse interaction at dierent direct/shear load
ratios for a square plate eld. Curves are shown for three plate slenderness
ratios (b=t = 60, 120, and 180) along with experimental results adopted from
Harding [19]. The dimensions and material properties for the three plates are
given in Tab. C.2. Further, the stresses are non-dimensionalized by the yield
stress y and y for pure direct and pure shear stress respectively. . . . . . . 182
C.11 Graphical comparison of the buckling and collapse interaction at dierent
direct/shear load ratios for a square plate eld with three dierent slenderness
ratios (b=t = 60, 120, and 180). That is, for the same three plates as in
Fig. C.10. Note that the buckling interaction curve for the slenderness ratio
b=t = 60 has been truncated at =y = 1:2. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183
D.1 Sketch of the assumed stress-strain relation for the stiener and plate part
of the beam-column respectively. These relations are used to establish the
curvature of the beam-column at any given strain in association with the
solution of the beam dierential equation as a set of ve ordinary dierential
equations (ODE's). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 188
D.2 Sketch of the assumed beam-column model used for the solution of the beam
dierential equation as a set of ve ordinary dierential equations (ODE's).
The chosen sign convention is shown, along with the loading and boundary
conditions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189
D.3 Plot of the load-displacement of the test beam-column as predicted by the
idealized beam-column approach and the direct solution of the beam dier-
ential equation. The geometric and material properties for the beam-column
is given in Tab. D.1. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191
208 List of Figures

List of Tables
2.1 Characteristics of full scale experiments conducted since the turn of the cen-
tury, investigating the ultimate longitudinal strength of the vessel. Year of
test, principal dimensions, and test group are listed. The list is originally
complied by Yao [47]. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
3.1 Measured welding residual stresses in the laser welded panel as reported
by Dow [9]. The panel is an orthogonally stiened grillage approximately
3300 mm in total length by 1250 mm in total width, which was investigated by
the Technical Committee III.1 of ISSC'97 [12], with the purpose of benchmark-
ing numerical predictions of the ultimate and post-ultimate capacity against
experimental results. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
3.2 Summary of the ultimate capacity as predicted by the fteen calculations
of the laser welded panel investigated by the Technical Committee III.1 of
ISSC'97 [12]. The average axial stress c at collapse is listed along with the
non-dimensionalized stresses and strains also at collapse (cf. Fig. 3.3). Further,
the relative deviation from the experimental data is shown. . . . . . . . . . . 26
6.1 List of material properties and sectional parameters for the Nishihara [31]
box girder simulating a single skin tanker (Principal dimensions are shown in
Fig. 6.2). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
6.2 Ultimate moment capacity for the Nishihara box girder simulating a single
skin tanker structure. The results were obtained by Melchior Hansen [17]
using both a nonlinear nite element analysis (Table 2.5 [17]), and a beam-
column analysis (Figure 2.17 [17]) somewhat similar in its formulation to the
present procedure. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96
6.3 Calculated ultimate moment capacity for the Nishihara box girder simulating
a single skin tanker structure. The results are listed in comparison with both
the experimental data from [31], and the capacities reported in [17] (see further
Tab. 6.2). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98
209
210 List of Tables
6.4 List of principal dimensions and sectional parameters for the double hull
tanker structure analyzed in the combined loading of bending moment and
vertical shear by Melchior Hansen [17]. A sketch of the midship section for
this vessel is shown in Fig. 6.5. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102
6.5 List of the predicted ultimate capacities for vertical shear force, hogging,
and sagging moment for the midship section of the double hull tanker shown
in Fig. 6.5. Also listed are the longitudinal strength parameters, i.e. the
rst yield moment and the plastic moment. The listed results are presented
graphically as moment-curvature responses in Fig. 6.6, and as moment-shear
interaction in Fig. 6.7. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
7.1 List of the principal dimensions for the 360,000 deadweight tons, double hull
Ultra Large Crude Carrier (ULCC) used as test case to demonstrate the
present procedure. The prole of the tanker is shown in Fig. 7.1, and the
structural layout of the midship section in Fig. 7.2. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110
7.2 List of the sectional and longitudinal strength parameters for the midship
section of the 360,000 deadweight tons, double hull Ultra Large Crude Carrier
(ULCC) used as test case to demonstrate the present procedure. The midship
section is shown in Fig. 7.2. Further, the prole of the tanker is shown in
Fig. 7.1 and Tab. 7.1 lists the principal dimensions of the vessel. . . . . . . . 111
7.3 List of the predicted ultimate capacities relating to the longitudinal strength
for the midship section of the ultra large crude carrier in its intact, as-build
condition. That is, the ultimate capacities for vertical shear force, hogging,
and sagging moment about the horizontal axis. Also listed in the table are
the rst yield moment and the plastic moment. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112
for the midship section of the ultra large crude carrier in its ballast condition,
i.e. at a draught of 11:30 m. That is, the ultimate capacities for vertical shear
force, hogging, and sagging moment about the horizontal axis. Also listed in
the table are the rst yield moment and the plastic moment. . . . . . . . . . 121
for the midship section of the ultra large crude carrier in the ctitious ground-
ing condition. That is, the ultimate capacities for hogging and sagging mo-
ment about the horizontal axis. Also listed in the table are the rst yield
moment and the plastic moment. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126
7.6 Table of the stiness and strength of carbon steel at elevated temperatures.
The Young's modulus and the yield stress are given as fraction of their ini-
tial values at twenty degrees Celsius. The table is adopted from the Steel
Construction Institute's Guidance Notes [3]. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130
List of Tables 211
for the midship section of the ultra large crude carrier in the ctitious re /
explosion condition. That is, the ultimate capacities for hogging and sagging
moment about the horizontal axis. Also listed in the table are the rst yield
moment and the plastic moment. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130
7.8 Summary listing of the longitudinal strength for the ultra large crude carrier as
predicted by the present procedure in the four conditions investigated. These
four conditions are:
Intact, as-build condition
Ballast condition
Grounding damage condition
Fire/explosion damage
for which the rst yield and plastic moment are listed along with the ultimate
capacities in both hogging and sagging. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133
C.1 List of dimensions and material properties for the three plates with dierent
length over with ratios used to test the developed nite dierent methods
ability to predict the buckling behavior of an in-plane loaded plate. . . . . . 166
C.2 List of dimensions and material properties for the three plates with dierent
slenderness ratios used to test the developed nite dierent methods ability
to predict the collapse behavior of an in-plane loaded plate. . . . . . . . . . . 181
D.1 Geometric and material properties for the beam-column used to test the al-
ternative solution scheme to the idealized behavior. This alternative being
the direct solution of the ve ordinary dierential equations describing the
standard beam equation (see Fig. D.3). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 190
212 List of Tables

Ph.D. Theses
Technical University of Denmark Lyngby
1961 Strm-Tejsen, J.
Damage Stability Calculations on the Computer DASK.
1963 Silovic, V.
A Five Hole Spherical Pilot Tube for three Dimensional Wake Measurements.
1964 Chomchuenchit, V.
Determination of the Weight Distribution of Ship Models.
1965 Chislett, M.S.
A Planar Motion Mechanism.
1965 Nicordhanon, P.
A Phase Changer in the HyA Planar Motion Mechanism and Calculation of Phase
Angle.
1966 Jensen, B.
Anvendelse af statistiske metoder til kontrol af forskellige eksisterende tilnrmelses-
formler og udarbejdelse af nye til bestemmelse af skibes tonnage og stabilitet.
1968 Aage, C.
Eksperimentel og beregningsmssig bestemmelse af vindkrfter pa skibe.
1972 Prytz, K.
Datamatorienterede studier af planende bades fremdrivningsforhold.
1977 Hee, J.M.
Store sideportes ind ydelse pa langskibs styrke.
1977 Madsen, N.F.
Vibrations in Ships.
1978 Andersen, P.
Blgeinducerede bevgelser og belastninger for skib pa lgt vand.
1978 Romeling, J.U.
Buling af afstivede pladepaneler.
1978 Srensen, H.H.
Sammenkobling af rotations-symmetriske og generelle tre-dimensionale konstruk-
tioner i elementmetode-beregninger.
1980 Fabian, O.
Elastic-Plastic Collapse of Long Tubes under Combined Bending and Pressure Load.
213
214 List of Ph.D. Theses Available from the Department
1980 Petersen, M.J.
Ship Collisions.
1981 Gong, J.
A Rational Approach to Automatic Design of Ship Sections.
1982 Nielsen, K.
Blgeenergimaskiner.
1984 Rishj Nielsen, N.J.
Structural Optimization of Ship Structures.
1984 Liebst, J.
Torsion of Container Ships.
1985 Gjerse-Fog, N.
Mathematical Denition of Ship Hull Surfaces using B-splines.
1985 Jensen, P.S.
Stationre skibsblger.
1986 Nedergaard, H.
Collapse of Oshore Platforms.
1986 Junqui, Y.
3-D Analysis of Pipelines during Laying.
1987 Holt-Madsen, A.
A Quadratic Theory for the Fatigue Life Estimation of Oshore Structures.
1989 Vogt Andersen, S.
Numerical Treatment of the Design-Analysis Problem of Ship Propellers using Vortex
Latttice Methods.
1989 Rasmussen, J.
Structural Design of Sandwich Structures.
1990 Baatrup, J.
Structural Analysis of Marine Structures.
1990 Wedel-Heinen, J.
Vibration Analysis of Imperfect Elements in Marine Structures.
1991 Almlund, J.
Life Cycle Model for Oshore Installations for Use in Prospect Evaluation.
1991 Back-Pedersen, A.
Analysis of Slender Marine Structures.
List of Ph.D. Theses Available from the Department 215
1992 Bendiksen, E.
Hull Girder Collapse.
1992 Buus Petersen, J.
Non-Linear Strip Theories for Ship Response in Waves.
1992 Schalck, S.
Ship Design Using B-spline Patches.
1993 Kierkegaard, H.
Ship Collisions with Icebergs.
1994 Pedersen, B.
A Free-Surface Analysis of a Two-Dimensional Moving Surface-Piercing Body.
1994 Friis Hansen, P.
Reliability Analysis of a Midship Section.
1994 Michelsen, J.
A Free-Form Geometric Modelling Approach with Ship Design Applications.
1995 Melchior Hansen, A.
Reliability Methods for the Longitudinal Strength of Ships.
1995 Branner, K.
Capacity and Lifetime of Foam Core Sandwich Structures.
1995 Schack, C.
Skrogudvikling af hurtiggaende frger med henblik pa sdygtighed og lav modstand.
1997 Cerup Simonsen, B.
Mechanics of Ship Grounding.
1997 Olesen, N.A.
Turbulent Flow past Ship Hulls.
1997 Riber, H.J.
Response Analysis of Dynamically Loaded Composite Panels.
1998 Andersen, M.R.
Fatigue Crack Initiation and Growth in Ship Structures.
216 List of Ph.D. Theses Available from the Department

Department of Naval Architecture
And Offshore Engineering
Building 101E
Dk-2800 Lyngby
Denmark
Phone +45 4525 1360
Telefax +45 4588 4325
Email ish@ish.dtu.dk
Internet http://www.ish.dtu.dk
ISBN 87-89502-03-5

Structural Capacity of The Hull Girder

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Structural Capacity of The Hull Girder

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Technical University of Denmark

Lars Peter Nielsen

Lars Peter Nielsen

DEPARTMENT OF NAVAL ARCHITECTURE AND OFFSHORE ENGINEERING

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Publication Reference Data

 The Danish Technical Research Council (STVF),

Lars Peter Nielsen

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 Overall System Modeling:

1. Intact, as-build condition.

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Gennem dette arbejde er en procedure der anvender bjlkesjlemetoden og det asymmetriske

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2 Ultimate and Post-Ultimate Capacity of the Hull Girder 7

4 The Beam-Column Method 31

7 Application of the Procedure 109

8 Conclusion and Recommendations 137

B Solution to the Classical Beam-Column Problem 149

C Solution of the von Karman Equations 159

Global System Analysis

For derivatives of multi variable functions the comma notation, e.g.

f;x = @f@x(x) or f;xz = @f@x@z

(b) Functions/expressions evaluated at a speci c value is indicated by a vertical bar

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1.1 Overview and Project Aliation

1.4 Objective and Scope of Work

1.5 Organization of the Thesis

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2.2 Longitudinal Strength

max = zMImax (2.2)

2.4 Ultimate and Post-Ultimate Strength

2.5 Pre-Selection of Method

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Table 3.1: Measured welding residual stresses (MPa).

3.2 De nition of Laser Welded Panel

3.3 Summary of Performed Calculations and Methods

y = ApAy,p ++ 44AAsy,s = 423:9 MPa and "y = Ey = 2048

Method Total Calculation reference number(s)

Figure 3.3: Calculated and measured non-dimensionalized, axial stress-strain

Table 3.2: Ultimate capacity predictions.

3.6.1 The Finite Element Methods

Figure 3.4: Calculated and measured non-dimensionalized, axial stress-strain

3.6.2 The Beam-Column and Idealized Structural Unit Methods

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Figure 4.1: De nition sketch for the beam-column approach.

1. Collapse occurs locally between two adjacent frames.

4.2 Load Description

4.2.3 Accidental Loads & Probabilistic Reliability Analysis

4.3 System Analysis

Figure 4.4: De nition sketch for the forced curvature principle

4.3.1 Pure Horizontal Bending

for a given rotation  of the strain-plane.

Figure 4.5: De nition of the local beam-column reference system.

'e =  cos( ) (4.6)

4.3.3 General Load Condition

Figure 4.7: De nition sketch for the forced curvature principle

Figure 4.8: Plane sketch of the the forced curvature principle

Figure 4.9: Typical moment-curvature response curve.

4.4 Ultimate Capacity Criterions

My,u = MINA,u cos (Horizontal moment) (4.19)

4.5 Implementation Notes

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The Danish Technical Research Council (STVF),

Overall System Modeling:

Gennem dette arbejde er en procedure der anvender bjlkesjlemetoden og det asymmetriske

(b) Functions/expressions evaluated at a specic value is indicated by a vertical bar

1.1 Overview and Project Aliation

max = zMImax (2.2)

3.2 Denition of Laser Welded Panel

y = ApAy,p ++ 44AAsy,s = 423:9 MPa and "y = Ey = 2048

Figure 4.1: Denition sketch for the beam-column approach.

Figure 4.4: Denition sketch for the forced curvature principle

for a given rotation of the strain-plane.

Figure 4.5: Denition of the local beam-column reference system.

'e = cos( ) (4.6)

Figure 4.7: Denition sketch for the forced curvature principle

Figure 5.2: Square plate with in-plane load z and x.

What is the buckling load of the plate? And

P (0) + P (2) "2 (5.32)

Z h (1) (2) (11) (1) (2) (11) (1) i (1)

N (2) = N (2) + N^ (2) P (2) (5.35)

v2 = x2 + z2 , xz + 3xz2 (5.37)

Figure 5.5: Plastic hinge conguration.

Figure 5.7: Plastic displacement denition.

Figure 5.8: Load-displacement curves demonstrating the eect of shear stress.

5.11 Beam-Columns without Stieners

Figure 7.1: Prole of the ultra large crude carrier.

Plastic / rst yield moment Mp=My = 1:42