Case studies on the probabilistic characteristics of ultimate strength of stiffened panels with uniform and non-uniform localized corrosion subjected to uniaxial and biaxial thrust

Abstract

Based on Nonlinear Finite Element Analysis (NFEA), this paper focuses on the bi-axial ultimate strength of typical bottom structures under corrosion. On one hand, uniform and not simultaneous corrosion across different structures is introduced, and surrogate models by Gaussian Process (GP) are built for both longitudinal and transverse cases individually, and corresponding probabilistic characteristics are investigated; meanwhile, corrosion effects on interaction between bi-axial stresses at ultimate state are studied. On the other hand, non-uniform localized pitting corrosion of normally distributed circular shapes is introduced, and different pitting corrosion densities are considered; structural bi-axial ultimate strengths under pitting corrosion are studied, and the results are compared with that from equivalent uniform corrosion; the probabilistic characteristics of structural ultimate strength in life cycle are studied; finally, the ultimate strength under randomly distributed pitting corrosion is compared with results from normally distributed pitting and uniform corrosion under various boundary conditions.