Author(s)

D. Beghin

Abstract

After a brief review of the merchant fleet evolution over the past 30 years, the paper presents in a first part the emerging trends in ship structural design and emphasizes that a rational life-cycle design should be reliability-based and include maintenance and operational considerations. The paper reminds briefly the various probabilistic methods versus the share given to the probabilistic approach and, in conclusion of the first part, presents the integrated system VeriSTAR developed by Bureau Veritas as a first step toward a life-cycle ship design. More generally, there are drastic foreseeable changes in the ship design philosophy, the most significant one being the move toward a Total Safety Concept. The second part of the paper gives an overview of these changes which will enable to develop more rationally-based Rules thanks to the use of risk analysis techniques for a

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