Abstract
With the increased employment of high tensile steel in shipstructures, the problem of low cycle fatigue should not be overlooked. In recent years there has been greater concern to improve the fatigue performance of containerships, ore-carrier ships and other ship types which have large hatches. This is mainly as a result of the large number of cracks found in areas located at the bottom and deck, especially in way of openings and in areas in which high tensile steel is extensively used.
This paper presents a new method of design to ensure fatigue performance of structures made of high tensile steel by applying a reduction of thickness factor based on fatigue considerations of mild steel rather than material yield stress relationships, as currently employed within the various Classification Society Rules.
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