Chapter 4 Ship Structures

4.1 Main Hull Strength

4.1.1 Introduction

Few who have been to sea in rough weather can doubt that the structure of a ship is subject to strain. Water surges and crashes against the vessel which responds with groans and shudders and creaks; the bow is one moment surging skywards, the next buried beneath green seas; the fat middle of the ship is one moment comfortably supported by a wave and the next moment abandoned to a hollow. The whole constitutes probably the most formidable and complex of all structural engineering problems in both the following aspects:

(a) the determination of the loading

(b) the response of the structure.

As with most complex problems, it is necessary to reduce it to a series of unit problems ...

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