Fatigue design investigation of the main- to cross-girder connection in steel railway bridges: A study on the beam railway bridges of the Oostertoegang in Amsterdam

Over the past few decades, the Netherlands has built numerous steel railway bridges to improve its infrastructure. The repeated loading from railway traffic makes steel bridges susceptible to fatigue damage. The stress ranges at fatigue-prone locations are generally higher in railway bridges than in road traffic bridges. Due to the limited space...

The design, production and verification of a fully elastic model of a catamaran for hydroelastic experiments

Catamarans are popular in the offshore sector as they combine good transverse stability and ample deck space with low wave resistance. However, their slender hull shape results in low restoring qualities in heave and pitch motions. The large motions in rough weather can often result in water impacting the underside of the deck connecting the two...

Fatigue life prediction of composite marine propellers

Fiber reinforced composites have been increasingly used in the aerospace and automotive industry, due to their potential advantages for designing flexible, strong and lightweight structures. More recently they are also being considered for the manufacturing of marine propellers. Since they have the potential to lower the weight, lower the...

Global structural design of large sailing catamaran

Welding induced residual stresses in a segment of an orthotropic steel deck

Welded details in orthotropic steel decks (OSD) are susceptible to fatigue cracks which are caused by local weld defects, geometric stress concentrations and residual tensile stresses. Residual tensile stresses are formed during the welding process and the distribution depends on many factors. Knowledge about the residual stress distribution is...

Feasibility study on condition-based maintenance of bolts using ultrasonic waves

The safety of offshore assets such as wind turbines, offshore cranes, and turret mooring systems partly relies on the integrity of heavy-duty bolted joints. These critical connections can be of different dimensions and exposed to monotonic and cyclic loading. Despite being small components of a structure, bolts need to be maintained...

Semi-submersible structural design: Strength and fatigue assessment of a twin-pontoon semi-submersible with different bracing configurations

Semi-submersibles are common vessels in the offshore sector. These vessels usually have a bracing structure to restrain floater movement and to support the deckbox structure. The bracing configuration influences strength, fatigue and other semi-submersible parameters. The first assignment objective was to study the structural design impact on a...

Analysing the ability of the UniGrow method to assess the effect of the geometry of the weld excess on the fatigue life of butt-welded plates

Fatigue is one of the driving limit states in the design of wind turbines, as they are subject to varying loadsfrom winds, waves and gusts. One such governing area is the butt-welded connection from the shell to thering flange. To optimize the tower design and to help focus future research, more insight on the influence ofmaterial properties and...

Analysis of elastoplastic response of maritime structures in breaking waves using a double pendulum with a friction hinge

Waves impacting on maritime structures can cause damage which endangers the environment around these structures. Due to high hydrodynamic loading, structures can enter the plastic regime, resulting possibly in structural failure. The understanding of the principles related to this structural failure due to waves is a key concept in this research...

Stress State Dependent Fracture Prediction in Shells

The goal of this thesis is to propose a stress state dependent ductile fracture criterion for shell elements that can be used for crash simulations for example collisions of ships with offshore structures. Fracture has been extensively researched for solid elements for finite element analysis in Bai & Wierzbicki [2009], among others. Shells...

Preventing Injuries of High Speed Marine Craft Operators: Incorporating Spinal Injury Models in the Analyses of Various Seat Suspension Principles

On board of High Speed marine Craft (HSC), the crew and the passengers are exposed to high levels of Whole Body Vibrations (WBV) and large magnitude Repeated mechanical Shocks (RS) caused by the motions of the craft. The HSCs are typically 10 meters long, capable of reaching a maximum speed up to 50 knots and widely used by various maritime...

Design Optimization of Shock Mounts Subjected to an Underwater Blast Wave

Shock mounts are crucial components in reducing the transmissibility of a shock or impact, thereby protecting the objective system. Such shock mounts are application-specific and need a redesign for specific uses. This study establishes a transient nonlinear finite element optimization procedure to design a shock mount for withstanding an...

Finite element modelling of open longitudinal stiffener to crossbeam connection in OSD bridges for hot-spot stress determination

The phenomenon of fatigue in orthotropic steel deck (OSD) bridges is a predominant problem because of complexity of the prediction methods. In the past, many researchers have studied the fatigue behaviour of various details in OSDs via both experiments and Finite Element Modelling (FEM). In the present research, the connection of open stiffener...

Application of Sandwich Panels in Offshore Structures: Static Strength, Buckling Strength and Weight & Cost Analysis

In steel structures, a lot of attention is paid to lightweight structure, i.e. reduction of dead load without compromising structural safety, integrity and performance as well as cost-effectiveness. Thanks to modern steel aluminium sandwich panel manufacturing technology a new possibility became available for lightweight structural design.The...

Wire and Arc Additive Manufacturing of Thin Structures Using Metal-Cored Wire Consumables: Microstructure, mechanical properties, and experiment-based thermal model

In recent years, Wire and Arc Additive Manufacturing (WAAM), is gaining attractions both from academia and industry, because it has the potential to substitute or complement the traditional manufacturing methods. Traditional materials and methods are reaching their limitation when demanding and special applications are considered.<br/><br/>The...

Confused sea-state induced fatigue: Joint swell and wind seas induced multiaxial stresses: the influence of confused sea-state induced multiaxial stress-states on fatigue damage of a USCG cutter.

Marine structures are mostly exposed to mild and moderate sea-states, where the structural response is elastic. Characteristics of environmental loading are highly stochastic in nature, resulting in stress-states that might be multiaxial. This thesis attempts to identify the source and effect of these multiaxial stress-states on fatigue damage...

Crane fatigue assessment using Multibody Dynamics and Finite Element Method

For decades crane standards are used to assess crane fatigue making use of a static method in combination with factors to take dynamic load effects into account. This is not sufficient to make more accurate predictions. The proposed method benefits from state of the art Multibody Dynamics simulation tool Msc ADAMS and Finite Element software...

Modelling and Control of Deep Sea Heave Compensation

Heave Compensation (HC) greatly improves the operability of lifting operations at sea, performed from ships under influence of heave motion. Especially with long cables and heavy payloads, the payload starts moving with larger amplitudes than the ship itself when no HC control is involved. HC aims to decouple the ships vertical motion due to the...