Vibrations of imperfect ship plating

This paper deals with vibration analysis of plates in marine structures. It is the main purpose of the paper to demonstrate that in order to obtain reliable frequency predictions it is necessary to include in the vibration analysis the effects of the unavoidable imperfections caused by welding or lateral fluid pressure. Furthermore, practical procedures for including these effects are presented. Simple algebraic expressions are derived for determination of small amplitude natural frequencies of vibration of initially imperfect rectangular plates subjected to uniaxial in-plane loads. The theoretical results show close agreement with experimental results available in the literature. For plating of marine structures with typical welding induced geometric imperfections and residual stresses it is shown that the lowest natural frequency of the unloaded imperfect plate can be twice as high as that of the perfect plate. For vibration analyses of plates submerged in a liquid the importance of taking into account deflections and membrane stresses caused by the hydrostatic pressure is demonstrated.