Fatigue crack propagation in marine structures under seaway loading

In order to prevent the initiation of a brittle crack in a marine structure, fatigue crack propagation from potentially hazardous embedded weld defects must be evaluated under the realistic seaway loading using certain clustered loading patterns. We first simulate the fatigue crack propagation under the random sequence of clustered loading so-called storm model. The numerical simulation is carried out by a method considering the plastic wake on the crack surfaces, which may cause the retardation effects after high amplitude of loading. Furthermore, fatigue crack propagation under the effect of slam-induced whipping stress is examined by a series of experiments using CT specimens and by simulations.