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The corrosion wastage of deck plates of ballast and cargo tanks is analyzed based on a non-linear corrosion model. This model is able to describe an initial period without corrosion due to the presence of a corrosion protection system, a transition period with a nonlinear increase of wastage up to a steady state of long-term corrosion wastage. This model is applied to corrosion wastage data of deck plates collected by the American Bureau of Shipping. The objective of this work is to fit this corrosion wastage model to the service measured data, determining the values of the model parameters that represent the best fit to the data so as to describe how corrosion wastage varies in time as a result of generalized corrosion.

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This paper outlines the essential steps taken in performing structural reliability calculations during the process of laying out a risk-based inspection program. The structural reliability analysis described in this paper essentially takes the deterministic finite element method (FEM) stress/fatigue analysis results, coupled with uncertain degradation mechanisms (e.g. corrosion rate, crack propagating parameters, etc.), and tracks the time-varying structural reliability index of the structural components under consideration. This can then be used to determine the timing for inspection of structural components. For the assessment of structural strength, an efficient and straightforward method is proposed to calculate the time-variant reliability index. This method is verified by an example problem and compared to the random process first-passage reliability solutions. Load combination issue is briefly discussed, in which an approach stems from the ABS Dynamic Loading Approach (DLA) coupled with concepts from Turkstra’s rule. This proposed simplistic load combination approach is verified through an example problem in which the result is compared to the solution calculated from a more sophisticated approach. Establishment of target reliability levels is also briefly discussed. For the assessment of fatigue behavior for welded connections, both S-N curve based and fracture mechanics based reliability methods are discussed. Their usefulness will be discussed in terms of both inspection interval as well as selecting the proper sampling percentage of connections to inspect. Statistical correlation among a group of similar connections is discussed to assist the selection of appropriate locations in the population of the aforementioned sampling. The usefulness of fatigue reliability analysis is also demonstrated by an example problem.

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