ABSTRACT
The external stiffened plates of ships are prone to being damaged due to collisions, grounding and contacts during their lifetime. Among these causes of damage, collisions and grounding accidents may cause not only local denting damage but also fracture damage. On the other hand, minor collisions with neighbouring moored vessels or contacts with mooring fenders may only generate local denting damage. If these impact loadings are applied in a repeated fashion, the damage from local denting may be cumulative. Therefore, it is necessary to investigate the effects that multiple denting damage have on the residual strength of the stiffened plates. In this study, denting damage was generated on various stiffened plates, and the residual strengths of the damaged stiffened plates were calculated using the commercial software ABAQUS. Design formulations were developed using parametric study results to estimate the residual strength of the stiffened plates subjected to multiple impact loading.
