An efficient time-variant reliability formulation for the safety assessment of an aging floating production storage and offloading (FPSO) vessels with the presence of through-thickness cracks (i.e., long cracks), is presented in this paper. Often in ship structures, cracks are detected by means of close visual inspection when they have already propagated through the thickness. The propagation of long cracks in stiffened panels is therefore considered, as they may be present in critical details of the deck and/or bottom plating of the vessel. Although it has been found that stiffened panels are tolerant to fatigue cracking, the safety of such structural components with the presence of long cracks may be threatened when exposed to overload extreme conditions, i.e., brittle or ductile fracture may occur. The probability of brittle fracture of an aging hull structure, i.e., a stiffened panel at the bottom plating with the presence of long cracks is studied in this paper. The mean stress effect due to the continuously varying still-water loading as well as residual stresses is explicitly accounted for in the crack growth calculation procedure presented herein. An analytical model is established for determining the equivalent long-term stress range including the mean stress effect. The continuously varying still-water load effects due to the operational nature of FPSOs introduce additional uncertainties in the estimation of fatigue damage as well as in the likelihood of fracture failure mode. In the present case study it is found that the time-invariant approach is a good approximation when dealing with the time-variant reliability problem. One of the main conclusions drawn from this study is that the still-water mean stress has a significant effect on the failure probabilities of stiffened panels with long cracks under brittle fracture mode.
Mean Stress Effect Correction in Frequency-domain Methods for Fatigue Life Assessment