Assessing the performances of elastic-plastic buckling and shell-solid combination in finite element analysis on plated structures with and without idealised corrosion defects

Ships and offshore structures operate in harsh and corrosive environments and they are subject to high hydrodynamic and inertial loads. Thus it is important to accurately predict the mechanical response of thin-walled marine structures subject to corrosion damage in loaded conditions. This paper present a transition study to investigate in depth the usage of shell and solid elements in nonlinear finite element structural analysis with localised corrosion features. An experimental, stereo full field imaging technique, 3D digital image correlation is used to verify both the shell and solid modelling results. The solid-to-shell coupling techniques were subsequently assessed based on a deck plate model. Models containing a localised section using either the second-order hexahedral element C3D20 or tetrahedral element C3D10I show a similar performance that is compatible with the model using only shell element. The proposed coupling method works well for localised electrochemical or mechanical-electrochemical analysis with subsequent geometrical updates.