Parameters Estimation and Evaluation for the Probability Density Function of Structural Fatigue Stress of a Container Vessel

Fatigue stress measurement has been playing a significant role in the ship structural health monitoring and ship structural safety assessment. The PDF (probability density function) of the measured stress is one of the essentials for the further studyin this domain. This paper, based on the strain-stress data collected from a container ship, focuses on the spectrum feature of the ship structural fatigue stress. A general analysis procedure for ship hull health estimation was firstly demonstrated. With the guidance of this procedure, the estimation and test of the parameters for the PDF of the stress were conducted, which showed that the stress spectrums fit well with the Weibull distribution. To review the fatigue state, the PDF and distribution function of fatigue damage increment were further developed and examined. The structural healthy assessment of this vessel shown the daily relative fatigue damage increment obeys log-normal or Weibull distribution and the increment of the fatigue damage on steel box girders of the ship hull was very low. Finally, the analyzing results yielded that the girder structure of the ship hull had a very low failure probability, matching well with the actual relative low working load of the ship.