Uncertainties estimates of hull girder still water loads of bulk and dry cargo ships through Monte Carlo simulations

This paper deals with the estimate of uncertainties affecting still water hull girder loads of bulk and dry cargo ships. In strength assessment of ships, two main categories of acting loads are considered: still water loads and wave induced ones. While the latter are generally defined bearing in mind their stochastic nature, this is not the case for still water loads, which are basically deterministically considered. The underlying assumption is that there is an overall control of the operational profile during the service of a ship. However, this is not the case in actual fact, especially for general dry cargo ships and bulk carriers, since the loading/unloading process cannot be fully controlled by the crew, often resulting into loading conditions rather different from those planned by the designer. Based on an earlier work, where loading conditions of the above-mentioned ship types were statistically analyzed, in the present paper Monte Carlo simulations are used to estimate the uncertainties affecting the hull girder still water loads of ships in service, showing that their allowable values can be exceeded due to inaccuracies in ship and cargo management.