Ultimate Compressive Capacity of Rectangular Plates With Partial Depth Pits

Abstract

Pitting corrosion has been one of main corrosion type of immersed ship hulls, which can bring heavy damage and even accidents to in-service ships, particularly to aged ships. To investigate the effects of pits on the ultimate compressive strength of mild steel plates, a series of non-linear FEM analysis on plates with partial depth corrosion pits are undertaken in the paper, changing the size, intensity and location of pits and the slenderness of plates. It is shown that the eccentricity induced by single side distributed pits has considerable degrading effects on the ultimate compressive capacity of plates. Although the degree of pit corrosion (DOP) does reflect the effect of pits to a large extent, it is not enough to rely on DOP exclusively to represent the extent of damage caused by pits, as “volume effect” should be considered.