Assessment of IACS-CSR implicit safety levels for buckling strength of stiffened panels for double hull tankers

The present study aims at applying structural reliability methods to assess the implicit safety levels of the buckling strength requirements for longitudinal stiffened panels implemented in the IACS Common Structural Rules (CSR) for double hull oil tankers. The buckling strength requirements considered are used in the initial stage of the hull girder scantlings’ design to control the buckling capacity of longitudinal stiffened panels subjected to the compressive loads induced by the hull girder vertical bending. The following buckling collapse failure modes are explicitly considered in the design formulation: uniaxial buckling of the plating between stiffeners, column buckling of stiffeners with attached plating and lateral-torsional buckling or tripping of stiffeners.The paper presents the procedure used to assess the implicit safety levels of the strength requirements for the three buckling collapse failure modes above mentioned, which includes the optimization of the scantlings of the plate panels and longitudinal stiffeners in order to reflect the minimum strength required by the formulation. A first order reliability formulation is adopted, and stochastic models proposed in the literature are used to quantify the uncertainty in the relevant design variables. A sample of five oil tankers representative of the range of application of the IACS-CSR design rules is considered. The effect of corrosion in the implicit safety levels is quantified based on the three corrosion levels of the Net Thickness Approach (NTA) adopted in the design rules. Sensitivity analyses are also performed to quantify the relative contribution or importance of each design random variable to the implicit safety levels.