Shipowners, builders and designers can now improve their knowledge of loads and stresses in planned and existing tankers using SafeHull software developed by the American Bureau of Shipping (ABS).
SafeHull arose out of a 3 year, $4 million research program at ABS, intended to improve ship safety through use of advanced technology. It involved applying advanced computer analysis to ABS rules for building and classing steel vessels.
"For too many years our industry has been tied to ship designs based upon static principles, modified by empirical factors to account for actual dynamic conditions," said ABS Chairman Frank Iarossi. SafeHull provides "the capacity to thoroughly quantify the dynamically induced stresses that could exist in a ship's structure."
HOW SAFEHULL WORKS
The SafeHull system quantifies the distribution of point loads for application to finite element analyses. ABS said designing with Safehull will lead to optimum distribution of steel in a ship's structure, which in turn will lead to a significant reduction of structural failures caused by yielding, buckling, and fatigue.
The package also enables users to predict the effects of corrosion during a ship's life. This allows critical areas of the structure to be identified as an aid to planning inspection and maintenance.
"By uniquely combining an engineering-first principles approach with our experience and technology, ABS has finally been able to create a system of formulations that represents the complex real life experience of a ship at sea," said Donald Liu, ABS senior vice president-technology. "This provides an accurate basis for determining what will be structurally sound."
An ABS delegation is visiting shipbuilders in Japan and South Korea this month to market the system. ABS intends to convince oil majors of SafeHull's value and expects considerable interest for applications on existing vessels.
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