Application of the Incorporated Meshing Technique to Non-Linear FE Analysis of Hull Girder Ultimate Strength

In the use of non-linear FE analyses for investigating the mechanical behavior and assessing the ultimate strength characteristics of ship hull structures, fine meshes can ensure the accuracy of results they are also, however, computationally expensive in terms of efficiency. Although the incorporated meshing technique, which can effectively reduce the computation time at almost no cost of accuracy, is a promising solution, it has not been systematically investigated. In this paper, the incorporated meshing technique is applied to the nonlinear FE analysis of hull girder ultimate strength based on the assumption of a certain stress distribution of ship section in the ultimate limit state. The computations are carried out with a variety of localized mesh refinements in the compressed zones. The results of ultimate strength analysis for a typical cargo hold shows that, compared to meshing with global refinement, the incorporated meshing technique can effectively improve the computational efficiency without sacrificing the numerical accuracy.