RECENT ADVANCES IN APPLICATIONS OF FINITE ELEMENT METHOD IN MARINE STRUCTURAL DESIGN

The finite element method was introduced in marine structural design with a significant delay with respect to other fields, as for example automotive, aircraft and aerospace industry, since the high degree of conventionality of these structures allowed a complete and effective structural scantling based on experienced and consolidated rules. In the last years, the development of unconventional advanced ships and the adoption of light and advanced materials showed the limitations of the range of validity of the existing rules and gave a very large impulse to the use of FEM, making it a common and extensively used tool to design the ship hull structure. In the present paper, a state of the art review of the applications of FEM to marine structural design are reported, by presenting significant examples of analyses relevant to hull beam strength calculation, collapse of structural components in advanced materials and ship-ship collisions.