Fatigue Strength Assessment of A Longitudinal Hatch Coaming in a 3800 TEU Containership by ABS Dynamic Approach

Fatigue strength assessment procedures have been implemented in the ship design rules by many classification societies. However, a large variation tin the details of the different approaches exists in practically all aspects influding load history assessment, stress evaluation and fatigue strength assessment. In order to assess the influences of thesd variations on the prediction of fatigue lives. a comparative study is organized by the ISSC Committee III.2 Fatigue and Fracture. A pad detail on the top of longitudinal hatch coaming of a panamax container vessel is selected for fatigue calculation. The work described in this paper is one set of results of this comparative study in which the ABS dynamics approach is applied. Through this analysis the following conclusions can be drawn. (1) With the original ABS approach, the fatigue life of this pad detail is very low, only 2.398 years. (2) The treatment of the stillwater bending moment in the ABS approach might be a source of conservatism. If the influence of stillwater bending moment is ignored, then the fatigue life for this pad detail is 7.036 years. (3) The difference between the nominal stress approach and the hot spot stress approach for this pad detail is about 26%.