A Study of Ultimate Strengths of Typical Longitudinal Girders With Openings in Container Ships

Container ships are widely used and their strength has always been the concern of designers and engineers. Additionally, container ships for a given size are of similar arrangements and structures because the containers are of same standards worldwide. So investigation into the strength of typical structures is meaningful. This paper focuses on the ultimate strength of typical longitudinal girders with openings locating between double bottoms which are subjected to longitudinal compression and have not been extensively studied yet. On one hand, the ultimate strengths of longitudinal girders with openings are calculated by Nonlinear Finite Element Analysis (NFEA), and effects of opening sizes, opening locations, boundary conditions and initial deflections are studied, and prediction expressions of ultimate strengths are proposed by varying opening sizes based on benchmarks of intact structures. On the other hand, uniform corrosion is introduced into these structures, and its influences on ultimate strength are also investigated. The results are representative and can be of reference values for similar structures.