ANALYSIS OF THE BUCKLING STRENGTH OF HULL STRUCTURES BY THE FINITE ELEMENT METHOD

The relative thickness of the hull structure has decreased with the increase of ship size as there is a limit to the thickness of plates used. As its result, the buckling strength of the hull structures has become one of the important problems. The classical analysis of buckling are limited of the regular shapes and boundary conditions such as simply supported rectangular plates. But the hull has irregular stiffener(as pannel breakers) distribution, and the behavior of combined action of a panel and stiffeners is far from the reach of classical approach. The Finite Element Method affords the light to these problems. This paper deals with the developments of FEM buckling analysis computer code for hull structures. Basic theorem is firstly described for stress analysis of three-dimensional plate structures. The method which covers bifurcation buckling analysis into elasto-plastic range is also described. Some examples of analysis including gunwale corner of transverse ring of 240,000 DWT tanker show the capability and usefulness of the present computer code.