Uncertainty in Strength Models for Marine Structures.

This project is a part of a long term effort to develop a reliability based method for the structural design of ship structures. The main task in the development of a reliability-based design method is the determination of the load factors and the strength (or resistance) factors. In order to achieve this task, it is necessary to have a quantitative measure of the various uncertainties that are inherent in both the loads and the strength models. Earlier SSC projects have examined the uncertainties related to loads. The objective of this project is to develop and demonstrate a method for quantifying the bias and uncertainty in structural strength algorithms (or computational models) in order to further the overall goal. (MM)