Analysis of Yielding and Buckling Strength of a Minimal Ballast Water Crude Oil Tanker

The minimal ballast water crude oil tanker has the design of a trapezoidal-shape inclined bilge entirely instead of the regular U-shaped tanker, also known as the trapezoidal tanker, which reduces the amount of the ballast water. This type of ship does not only reduce the cost on ballast water management, but also is beneficial to the environment for reducing the risk of water pollution. Since it is a new design, there are no applicable specifications for the assessment of structural strength at present. In order to find out characteristics of the yielding and buckling strength of this type of ship, the strength of a conventional tanker and a trapezoidal tanker are calculated by a finite element method and then compared with a variety of cases. It can be seen that the trapezoidal tanker has lots of advantages in strength and lighting weight.