On board measurement of stresses and deflections of a Post-Panamax containership and its feedback to rational design

Abstract One of the most important points in structural design of containerships is the strength of hatch corners. Formerly, hatch corners used to be assessed by combining the component induced by hull girder vertical bending and the component induced by hull girder torsion. In the design of new generation containerships without deck girders, the effect of cross deck fore-aft deflection has also become prominent. Another point is the impact of structural displacement on the deck fittings. About new generation ships, large fore-aft deflection of cross decks raised the new problem of interference of hatch covers, lashing bridges and other deck fittings. To cope with such problems, comprehensive analysis has been carried out during the design stage of a Post-Panamax containership. In parallel with this analysis, on-board measurement had been conducted for 3 years after delivery, in order to confirm wide varieties of structural reaction of a large container ship in seaways. Procedure to derive components of stress and deformations from selected measurement points was developed, and actual values were calculated based on actual measurement. From long-term prediction of each component, it was found that design assumption was in general appropriate. However, regarding the fore-aft deflection of cross deck strip, actual stack load is generally much smaller than the design value, and the resulting predicted extreme value was much smaller than design assumption. This factor should be taken into account in the design stage. Regarding the correlation between hull girder vertical bending and fore-aft deflection of cross deck strip, design assumption of full combination is too conservative. From the measurement, no explicit correlation was observed. Regarding the correlation between hull girder vertical bending and wave induced torsion, design assumption of no correlation was appropriate. From these results, new formulae to combine these three deflection modes were proposed. Whipping was observed in the measured data, indicating that more careful attention should be paid to avoid large stress concentration in deck area to enhance fatigue strength.