Ship Structures: An Overview

The basic ship structural components are commonly divided into two
general types:

• plating and
• stiffeners.

Stiffeners include frames, longitudinals, stringers, deck beams, deck

girders, bulkhead stiffeners, and stanchions. Plating includes bulkhead
plating, bottom plating, side shell plating, and deck plating, to name only a
few. Ship structures are most commonly made of combinations of plating
and stiffeners. Analytically we often treat stiffeners as beams or 1-D objects,
which mean that their length is much greater than their width or height (a
pencil is an example).
We often treat plating as 2-D objects, with two dimensions (length and
width) much greater than the thickness (a piece of paper is an example). A
third class of structures is “solids”, which are 3-D objects with their length,
width and thickness all of similar dimension. For manufacturing and weight
reasons, solids are rarely used in typical vessels

Ship structures are also characterized by which loads they are intended to
resist:

o Primary structure resists the global bending of the vessel due to

vessel hogging and sagging conditions. Primary structure is evaluated
by treating the ship as a very large box beam subjected to bending by
the waves.
o Tertiary structure resists the local hydrostatic pressures and/or point
loads. A common example is side plating with seawater pressure on
one side.
o Secondary structure either resists large areas of hydrostatic loads or
transfers the tertiary loads to primary structure. A secondary
structure may be the combined plating and stiffener structure of the
hull bottom or side.
Note that a single piece of structure may resist multiple loads. Hull bottom
plating for example, is a part of primary, secondary and tertiary structure!

Forces Acting Upon a Ship At Sea

When a ship is at sea it is subjected to forces which cause the structure to
distort. The forces may be divided first of all into two categories:

I. Static Forces;
II. Dynamic Forces

Static Forces:
When a ship is floating in equilibrium in still water, only static forces act on
the ship. The forces are two in number:

I. The weight of the ship and all that it carries acting vertically
downwards;
II. The hydrostatic pressure acting perpendicular to the outside
surface of the ship. In equilibrium these hydrostatic pressures
must produce first of all a vertical component which is exactly
equal to the weight. The pressures will also have longitudinal
and transverse components, but the resultants of these must be
equal to zero since the ship is at rest.
Dynamic Forces
Two additional factors have to be taken into account:

1. The Waves:
The buoyancy of a ship in waves is to say that the pressure at
any point on the surface of the hull is proportional to the
distance below the free surface as would be the case in still
water. Due to the motion of the water particles in the waves
and in order to make a true calculation of the buoyant force it is
necessary to make a correction for this effect which is called
“Smith Effect”. The effect is to reduce the buoyancy of the ship
in the presence of a crest and to increase the buoyancy in the
presence of a trough.

2. The motion of the ship itself.

A ship in a wave system has six degrees of freedom
1. Linear
a. Vertical - Heaving
b. Transverse - Swaying
c. Longitudinal - Surging
2. Rotational
a. About Longitudinal Axis - Rolling
b. About Transverse Axis - Pitching
c. About Vertical Axis - Yawing

All these motions involve accelerations which are communicated to every

mass in the ship, thus creating, thus creating dynamic forces which may be
added to the static forces due to the weights of the items concerned. These
dynamic forces are usually much less than the static forces.

Slamming

In severe cases the motion of the ship may be sufficiently great to cause it
to leave the water altogether and when it makes contact with the water
again very large dynamic forces can be created. This can occur especially
near the fore end of a ship and is often referred to as slamming.

The only other cause of dynamic loading on the structure is the wind. The
wind could be said o be responsible for all the dynamic forces acting upon
the ship, since waves are generated by wind.

Hogging and Sagging

The longitudinal distribution of buoyancy applied to a ship by a passing
wave (or a ship passing through a wave) creates a bending moment on the
ship, which varies along the length of the ship. This is a wave-induced
buoyancy distribution.

The two extreme cases are given specific names. A “hogging” condition is
when the crest of the wave is amidships (and trough at bow and stern).
This causes flexure of the hull which puts the main/upper decks in tension
and keel and bottom plating in compression.
A “sagging” condition is the reverse – with trough amidships (and crests at
bow and stern). This puts the main/upper deck in compression and keel
and bottom plating in tension.

Occurrence of Largest Hogging/Sagging Bending

Moment in Case of Passing Waves
A ship in a particular condition of loading may pass through a hogging and
sagging cycle as the wave moves from the crest amidships position to the
crests at the perpendicular positions. This cycle will not yield the largest
hogging and the largest sagging bending moments. If the condition of
loading is such as to give the largest hogging bending moment, the sagging
bending moment when the crests have reached the perpendiculars will be
quite small. The hogging bending moment would be small for the loading
conditions giving the greatest sagging bending moment.

When a wave passes by a vessel the worst hogging moment occurs when
the mid body is on the crest of a wave, and the bow and stern are in the
troughs. The worst sagging moment occurs when the mid body is on the
trough, and the bow and stern are on crests. The highest bending moments
occur when the wavelength approaches the vessel length.

The net bending stress distribution, however, requires knowledge and

accounting of the still water loading as well (including hydrostatic
buoyancy distribution and weight distribution).

Shearing Force and Bending Moment Curves

From Buoyancy curve and weight curve we can write
𝐿
Total buoyancy = ∆= ∫ 𝑏 𝑑𝑥
0

𝐿
Total weight = ∆= ∫ 𝑤 𝑑𝑥
0
In equilibrium;
𝐿 𝐿
∫ 𝑏 𝑑𝑥 = ∫ 𝑤 𝑑𝑥
0 0
𝑥 𝑥
Force on part of structure from 0 to x = ∫ 𝑏 𝑑𝑥 − ∫ 𝑤 𝑑𝑥
0 0

Where x is some point distance from say after end. This represents a
shearing force on the ship which is tending to push the portion to the left of
x up or down relative to the portion to the right, according to whether the
buoyancy or the weight is in excess. Calculating this difference for various
points along the length of the ship, it is possible to plot a curve of shearing
force.

The moment of the weight about the section at x is given by

𝑀𝑤 = ∬ 𝑤 𝑑𝑥 𝑑𝑥 and the corresponding moment of the buoyancy is

𝑀𝑏 = ∬ 𝑏 𝑑𝑥 𝑑𝑥

Net Moment = ∬ 𝑏 𝑑𝑥 𝑑𝑥 − ∬ 𝑤 𝑑𝑥 𝑑𝑥

This represents a bending moment which is causing the ship to bend in a

longitudinal vertical plane like a beam.

If the ship is moving amongst waves, because the free surface of the water
is no longer flat, the distribution of the buoyancy along the length of the
ship is altered.

This modification to the buoyancy distribution in its turn produces

modifications to the forces and moment acting upon the ship, so that there
will be a change in the shearing force and bending moment acting upon the
ship in still water. It is therefore possible to divide the total force and
moment acting upon the ship into two components;

Total Shearing Force=Still Water Shearing Force + Shearing force due to

waves

Total Bending Moment=Still Water Bending Moment + Wave Bending

Moment
Functions of the Ship’s Structure
The ship is capable of bending in a longitudinal vertical plane. There must
be material in the ship’s structure which will resist this bending. Any
material distributed over a considerable portion of the length of the ship
will contribute to the longitudinal strength. This category are the side and
bottom shell plating, the inner bottom plating and any decks which there
may be.

This longitudinal material forms a box girder of very large dimensions in

relation to its thickness. Consequently, unless the plating is stiffened in
some way, it would be incapable of withstanding compressive loads. For
this reason, it becomes necessary to fit transverse rings of material spaced
from 2ftto 3 ft apart throughout the length of the ship. This is the
procedure which is called Transversely Framed Ship. The transverse
stiffening consists of three parts:

1. In the bottom between the outer and inner bottoms there are vertical
plates called Floors which have lightening and access holes cut in
them.
2. In the sides of the ship rolled sections called Side Frames are welded
to the plating.
3. The decks are also supported by rolled sections welded to the plating
called Beams.

The floors, side frames and beams at the various decks are connected by
means of brackets so that a continuous transverse ring of material is
provided. The effect of supporting the plating in this way is to reduce that
unsupported span and hence to raise the buckling strength of the plating to
enable it to carry compressive loads.

Another function of these transverse rings is to prevent transverse

distortion of the structure, so that the floors, side frames and beams are the
main items contributing to the transverse strength of the structure of the
ship. The main force involved here is that due to water pressure and, as this
will be greatest at the bottom of the ship, the bottom structure should be
very heavy. This is in fact so, a very heavy girder being provided by the
floor plate in conjunction with its associated inner and outer bottom
plating. The side of the ship is also subjected to water pressure of a rather
lesser magnitude, and in this case adequate stiffening is provided by the
girder consisting of the side frame welded to the side shell plating.

The beam with its associated deck plating forms an effective built up girder.
The main factor determining the sizes of the beams is the load which they
have to carry. This load may be cargo load, a load due to passengers or in
the case of weather deck some weather load.

Other r of the structure which contribute to transverse strength are

watertight bulkheads. Their primary object is to divide the ship into a
series of watertight compartments, but since they consist of transverse sets
of stiffened plating they have very considerable transverse rigidity and
hence contribute greatly to the prevention of transverse deformation of the
structure.

It is common practice nowadays to adopt a different form of construction in

which the sides of the ship are stiffened transversely whilst the decks and
bottom are stiffened by means of longitudinal. The effect of stiffening the
deck and bottom longitudinal members instead of transverse members is
to increase the buckling strength of the plating.

Since these longitudinal are effectively attached to the plating, they

contribute also to the general longitudinal strength of the structure. The
longitudinal have to carry cargo and water pressure loads and so, in order
to reduce their scantlings, they must be supported at positions other than
at the bulkheads. This is achieved by introducing deep transverse beams in
the decks spaced some 6 to 12 feet apart and by having transverse plate
floors in the bottom at the same spacing. These widely spaced transverse
members in conjunction with the closely placed side framing then provide
the transverse strength of the structure.

The longitudinal system of framing has often also been extended to the
sides of the ship as well as the decks and bottom. In fact when initially
developed for use in oil tankers this was the method which was adopted.
This was called the Isherwood System. At a later stage in the development
of the tanker the combined system of longitudinal in the bottom and deck
with transverse side framing was employed. In many of the larger oil
tankers of the present day, however, the complete longitudinal framing
system has been used.