LR updates ShipRight software

An enhanced Fatigue Design Assessment (FDA) Level 2 solution is now available in LR’s ShipRight software. It provides a robust tool which can help owners to reduce their risks. This first release covers oil tankers and membrane type LNG carriers.

Lloyd’s Register has given designers, ship owners and operators an updated tool to help assess new or existing designs and to help further reduce the risk of fatigue damage in ship’s hull structures.

Cracks and fractures at connections between longitudinal stiffeners and transverse frames of ship’s structures, particularly in large oil tankers with higher tensile steel constructions, were a serious concern in the 1980’s and the early 1990’s. To address these concerns in the early 1990’s, Lloyd’s Register introduced ShipRight FDA procedures to promote structural detail design and fatigue performance assessment.Over the last 20 years, Lloyd’s

Register has continuously invested in the development of ShipRight FDA procedures. A new FDA Level 2 module has been incorporated within the ShipRight software which further improves on current technology and makes the assessment tool more robust and versatile.

“We are confident that the new ShipRight FDA Level 2 module gives designers, ship owners and operators an even more reliable tool to further improve the level of confidence in their ship’s fatigue performance,” said Jimmy Tong, Technical Manager of Ship Structure Strength at Lloyd’s Register’s Marine Technology and Engineering Services. “This upgrades our ShipRight software, the industry’s preferred fatigue design assessment tool, to a higher level of usability and accuracy,” he added.

Fatigue design assessments, particularly for LNG carriers, become more demanding and challenging as ship owners often require long fatigue design life in harsh wave environments, e.g. 40 years fatigue life in North Atlantic wave environments. “Designers and owners need to have confidence in the structural performance of the latest generation of these large ships in such harsh wave environments. The fatigue performance of the hull structure is a key component in their operational capability and reliability,” said Tong.

This comprehensive structural analysis puts greater emphasis on the quality of the design details, particularly in the higher risk regions of the hull. Fatigue damage is a direct consequence of cyclic loading, construction standards and trading wave environments, with alignment also playing an important part. The new tool provides a reliable means to identify high-stress locations and to help reduce the risk of structural failure.

Ships complying with the requirements of the ShipRight FDA procedures will be eligible to be assigned the notation ShipRight FDA or ShipRight FDA Plus based on the specified requirements on fatigue design life and associated trading wave environments.

This new release of ShipRight software is focused on oil tankers and LNG carriers, and applicable to longitudinal end-connections.

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Press Release, July 2, 2014