Simulation research on fatigue crack propagation behavior in bulb stiffeners in ship structural details

Paper in proceeding, 2017

Fatigue crack propagation behavior in bulb stiffeners, which are widely used in ship structures, is indispensable information for ship structures' fatigue life prediction. This paper aims to provide reasonable simulation process for the fatigue cracks propagated in bulb stiffeners based on the Finite Element Method (FEM) and eXtended Finite Element Method (XFEM) by using FRANC 3D and ABAQUS respectively. In order to evaluate the simulations, the shape of a three dimensional surface crack in full-scale bulb stiffener was measured and estimated through a full-scale fatigue test on a typical ship structure detail. According to the comparisons of the crack propagation path between the experiment and simulation results, the simulation results were verified to be reasonable and acceptable. Moreover, through analyzing the crack propagation behavior in bulb section, the fatigue failure criterion of bulb stiffeners was investigated.