05-02-2026 - Lecture Hall L

PhD presentation

When Steel Meets the Sea: Corrosion Fatigue Assessment of Welded Joints in Floating Offshore Wind Turbines

Punya Gowda

Maritime renewable energy structures like floating offshore wind turbines(FOWTs) are typically exposed to wave and wind induced loading conditions varying over time, introducing a cyclic response. Fatigue can be a governing limit state. For commonly applied materials like steel, the arc-welded joints typically connecting the planar and tubular structural members are fatigue sensitive because of the notched geometries; hot spots. At the same time, the environment is corrosive, affecting the welded joint fatigue performance. Since corrosion and fatigue are mechanisms accumulating damage at different time scales and are vulnerable to dissimilar influence factors, interaction and even competition of the two is a complex phenomenon.
Currently, corrosion as fatigue influence factor is not incorporated explicitly as the fatigue strength parameter. During the presentation, I will present different corrosive environments and an assessment framework for corrosion fatigue of welded joints based on the Effective Notch Stress concept. This enables the formulation of a single fatigue resistance curve applicable to welded joints in both ambient air and corrosive marine environments, supporting durability-driven design of floating offshore wind turbines.

05-02-2026 - Lecture Hall L

PhD presentation

Are Conventional Regression Models Suitable for Alternatively Fuelled Ships?

Ben Noble

In order to fulfil its obligation to mitigate harmful emissions and reach net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, it is crucial that the maritime industry adopts new ship designs that run on alternative fuels. Early-stage ship design is a critical phase of the design process, as key design parameters are decided at this stage, and become costly to modify later.
Typically, initial ship dimensions and design parameters are estimated using regression models derived from existing ships. These models are therefore predominantly trained on ships that use conventional marine fuel. Given that the alternative fuels being considered have significantly different properties, this raises the question of whether regression models developed for conventionally fuelled ships are applicable to the design of alternatively fuelled ships.
My research investigates whether these models are suitable for the design of alternatively fuelled ships, and explores whether new models could be developed using the growing fleet of alternatively fuelled ships. In this presentation I will discuss the method used to achieve this, the models that have been investigated, and present an overview of some of the results.