Abstract
The present paper continues the recent work reported by Liu and Guedes Soares [1] where finite element simulations were conducted to investigate the ultimate strength of a container ship hull girder under cyclic bending moments. Here a membrane LNG carrier is investigated to evaluate the “cyclic ultimate strength” of this specialized ship hull structure including double bottoms, sides and decks. The paper aims to analyze the ultimate strength and to compare the collapse modes of a LNG carrier hull girder under monotonic and dynamic cyclic bending moments, revealing the difference in their failure modes. Nonlinear finite element method is employed, using the explicit LS-DYNA solver, to analyze the ultimate strength of hull structures. The numerical results show that the cyclic ultimate strength of hull structures is about 20% lower than the monotonic ultimate strength in the present study.
