Design Criteria for Scantling of Longitudinal and Transverse Connections in the Torsion Box Under Fatigue Loading

Fatigue is one of the main failure modes in marine structures, and it is caused by the strong cyclic characteristics of the loads they support. This failure mode is amplified in areas of high stress concentration, such as at the intersection of primary and secondary elements. In this paper, a two-phase study is proposed that compares numerical and experimental results using a digital image correlation technique. The described procedure establishes selection, design, and scantling criteria and provides recommendations for the design of the transverse structure using specimens with different geometries. These geometries correspond to different designs for the transverse primary structure that use a longitudinal secondary stiffener with variable thickness and longitudinal spacing to transverse in a dynamic and quasi-static regime. The stress state for this regime is calculated based on the biaxiality indication concept, which uses the fatigue phenomenon (safety factor and sensitivity curves) and fracture mechanics (parameters of the Paris crack propagation law, correlation value, and law of variation of the stress intensity factor).