Effect of Center Deck of Cargo Ship with Hatches in Two Rows on the Longitudinal Strength

Abstract

Recently, many cargo ships with hatches in two rows have been constructed, however, there are only few researches carried out on the behavior of center deck of these ships and the effective area of the deck was not always estimated with good accuracy. In order to evaluate the effective area of center deck, longitudinal strain distributions on the center decks of two cargo ships were measured at their launching and the test results were analysed theoretically. A method for calculating the effective area of center deck was shown and the various factors affecting on the efficiency of center deck were discussed.