Case Study 2: Hatch Corner Design for Container Ships

The second case study concerns an advanced hatch corner design in container ships, facilitating the fabrication. However, it contains the end of a fillet weld with a hot-spot at the weld toe. The applicability to highly-stressed deck structures was checked by component fatigue testing and finite element analyses. The tests were performed under 3-point-bending with constant load amplitudes. The coarse finite element model made of solid elements shows a structural stress concentration factor of 1.6. Using this factor, the fatigue lives are well above the relevant S-N curve of class FAT 100.