Advances in Marine Mechanical and Structural Engineering—2nd Edition

In the advanced design of novel structures used in marine, mechanical, and structural engineering, a pivotal challenge lies in accurately predicting their strength, amidst the integration of new materials and structures, within the context of extreme marine environments and potential accidents.

Advances in marine, mechanical, and structural engineering include mechanical analyses of advanced materials, such as alloys and composite materials, and strength analyses of novel structures such as sandwich structures in ship superstructures and special structures in underwater vehicles, in order to ensure that marine structures remain lightweight, safe, and economical throughout their lifetimes. Thus, the Special Issue, “Advances in Marine Mechanical and Structural Engineering”, was prepared to collect works relating to advances in marine, mechanical, and structural engineering in general. To continue this work, the present Special Issue, “Advances in Marine Mechanical and Structural Engineering—2nd Edition”, was developed to include more works related to this topic.

Ultimate strength evaluation constitutes a fundamental aspect of structural safety assessment in ship design, playing a pivotal role in ensuring structural integrity of in-service ships. For enhancing the collapse characteristics of damaged ships, Ao et al. [1] carried out an experimental and numerical analysis of the ultimate strength of a cracked box girder subjected to bidirectional cyclic bending moments.

With the increasing demand for liquefied CO₂ carriers to support carbon capture, utilization, and storage, conventional stress-based design approaches have limitations because they neglect imperfections resulting from fabrication and material. To assess these flaws, Kim et al. [2] conducted an engineering critical assessment for a liquefied CO₂ cargo tank to evaluate the effect of finite element configuration on structural integrity in the presence of potential flaws.

Slamming impact is a typical load on a ship bow. Differing from previous studies on free-drop tests, Xia et al. [3] focuses on the ultimate bearing capacity and failure mechanism of the ship’s bow under slamming loads. The dynamic ultimate bearing capacity of stiffened plates with different stiffnesses under lateral slamming loads was studied.

The vibration of large containerships induced by waves and its resulting fatigue damage have been the focus of research in the field of marine engineering. Based on potential flow theory, Lu et al. [4] investigated the nonlinear wave-induced vibration response of large containerships, including the superposition of sum and difference frequencies, by considering the influence of second-order hydrodynamic forces.

With the growing demand for space launches, safer and more flexible offshore rocket launch technologies are being developed to overcome the limitations of land-based launches. To solve one of the technical problems, Pan et al. [5] employed CFD simulation to analyze liquid sloshing within a cylindrical tank, both with and without baffles.

Sandwich composite plates are widely used in many industrial applications including marine fields. Li et al. [6] presented numerical investigations into the free vibration properties of a sandwich composite plate with two fiber-reinforced plastic face sheets and a functionally graded carbon nanotube-reinforced composite core made of functionally graded carbon nanotube-reinforced composite resting on a Winkler/Pasternak elastic foundation.

To meet the safety and economical requirements of marine structures, uncertainty has been widely studied as a key factor in the design and manufacture of marine structures. Traditional methods for hybrid reliability analysis usually require a nested optimization framework, which will lead to too many calls to the limit state function and result in poor computational efficiency. In response to this problem, Li et al. [7] creatively proposed a de-nesting hybrid reliability analysis method showing greater effectiveness.

A structural health-monitoring system can be used to gather local or global strain data and perform precise structural health management, which is a crucial step in efficiently ensuring the safety of the structure. Chen et al. [8] carried out experimental research on the long-span hull box girder based on inverse finite element method technology to ensure the structural safety of the hull box girder.

With the rapid advancement of new-generation information technology, the virtual–real fusion interaction has increasingly become a crucial technique for structural analysis to determine the strength envelope of hulls. Jiang et al. [9] proposed a virtual assembly method for a structural virtual–real fusion test based on the oriented bounding box (OBB) algorithm, the Devillers and Guigue algorithm, and differential triangle facets algorithm.

In summary, the articles presented in this Special Issue cover broad research topics related to advances in marine mechanical and structural engineering, guiding readers through the best analysis approach.