Fatigue in Marine Structures Discussed in Germany

Fatigue assessment in shipping is vital in order to predict the structural durability of welded joints. Progress made during the past decade regarding different approaches was presented at the seminar "Local Approaches for Fatigue Assessment of Marine Structures" at Germanischer Lloyd headquarter. The seminar revived interest from engineers and research scientists from all around the world: 50 international experts took part in the seminar, coming from all over Europe and Asia.

Fatigue experts from classification society Germanischer Lloyd, the Institute of Ship Structural Design & Analysis from Hamburg University of Technology (TUHH) and Fraunhofer Institute for Structural Durability and System Reliability LBF gave an extended overview about the assessment of fatigue behaviour of welded structures. The seminar focussed on nominal stress, hot-spot, notch stress and strain approaches as well as crack propagation calculations.

In recent years, progress has been made in the application of fatigue and fracture assessment procedures facilitating safe and cost effective decisions in design, material specification and maintenance of structures. This technology has been applied to ships and other marine structures.

Sophisticated procedures on how to deal with the avoidance of cracks in cyclic loaded structural components, the prediction of fatigue lifetime of marine structures and the verification of damages in view of appropriate repair measures were presented.

The seminar was part of the European founded research project MARSTRUCT, a network of excellence with the overall objective to improve the safety, effectiveness, reliability, environmental behaviour and comfort of ship structures through the application of advanced structural and reliability assessment within design, fabrication and operation.