A comparative study of fatigue assessment of a container ship structure using various direct calculation approaches

Paper in proceeding, 2012

Today, it is common practice to carry out fatigue assessments of ship structures using direct calculation procedures. Many numerical codes are available for these types of analyses. They could yield different values in a fatigue life prediction due to the different degrees of complexity as well as the large number of uncertainties in the computation of the ship’s response. In this investigation, a comparative study is carried out on a Panamax container ship in oblique waves using different typical direct calculation methods. The results of fatigue life prediction using these methods are compared with results obtained from full-scale measurements. It is found that the nonlinear time-domain method shows the best agreement with the full-scale measurements, and therefore, it is recommended to be used in fatigue predictions.