Life-cycle fatigue reliability of ship structures: A proposed system

Fatigue damage of structural details in essence may be attributed to the consequences of the traditional approach of securing the reliability of structures when the design and maintenance are provided by different groups of experts with different principles and different professional training. Progress may be achieved when the whole life-cycle reliability of a structure is provided uniformly in the design and service cycles. A series of actions and appropriate fatigue models composing an automated system to aid in the design and maintenance of ship structures is proposed. Considering the existing and feasible actions, attention is focused on the fatigue design and post-fabrication assessment of fatigue properties at critical locations.