ABSTRACT
This paper presents a review and study on ultimate strength analysis methods for plates in axial compression. The strength of ship structures is critically important to the safety of a ship. Buckling strength is often dictates the ship design scantlings, particularly for thin plated ships such as passenger ships and RoRo ships where optimizing steel weights are highly demanding. This paper presents a recent study on the buckling and ultimate strength assessments of thin plated structures. Both non-linear finite element analysis and experimental tests are carried out to establish the buckling capacity of the structures. An exploitation of such buckling capability in ship design assessments is discussed.
