Measurements in a container ship of wave-induced hull girder stresses in excess of design values

• Full-scale measurements of hull-girder stresses in a large container ship have been thoroughly analysed.
• Stresses in excess of the design value were observed.
• The hydro-elastic behavior of the hull girder can be predicted using simple approximations for onboard decision support.

This paper describes full-scale measurements of the wave-induced vertical bending moment amidships a 9400 TEU container carrier and focuses on the effect of the hydro-elastic high-frequency vibration on the extreme hogging wave bending moment. One extreme event, where the vertical wave-induced hogging bending moment amidships slightly exceeds the design value, is analysed and the measurements are verified by the use of the relationship between measurements of accelerations and strains and simple beam theory. The measurements are found to be reliable. In the extreme case, the high-frequency vibrations caused by impulsive loads are observed to be of the same magnitude as the rigid-body wave-induced response and thus acts to double the total vertical bending moment amidships. It was also found that even though the ship is sailing in bow quartering seas, only the 2-node vertical vibration mode is apparently excited. Following the extreme event analysis and verification, three hours of strain measurements are used for establishing a Gumbel distribution for the extreme value prediction, and it is found that the probability of exceeding the rule design wave bending moment by 50% in the given sea state is quite significant. Finally, the hydro-elastic behaviour of the hull girder is assessed by simple approximations using the measured statistical properties and closed-form expressions and the agreement with the actual measurements is found to be good.