To improve the energy efficiency, the demand for new light-weight solutions has been increased significantly in the last decades. The weight reduction of the current ship structures is possible using thinner plates, that is, plate thickness between 3 and 4 mm. However, at present this is, in normal cases, not possible due to the 5 mm minimum plate thickness requirement given by classification societies. The present paper investigates the fatigue strength of thin-plated ship structures. In the European research project BESST – ‘Breakthrough in European Ship and Shipbuilding Technologies’ – the extensive fatigue test programme was carried out for butt- and fillet-welded specimens, which were manufactured by the arc, laser and laser-hybrid welding methods. The test programme also covered the different production quality and thus a large variation of misalignments was included. Fatigue test results were analysed using the nominal as well as the structural stress approach, where the actual geometry of the specimens was taken into account. The results show that the present design S–N curve with slope value of 3 is applicable to thin plates, but it is slightly non-conservative. The fatigue test results for thin plates show better agreement with the slope value of 5. For thin plates and slender ship structures, the secondary bending stress due to angular misalignment plays an important part and changes in a non-linear way with the applied tension load. Therefore, it is important to consider the plate straightening effect in structural stress analysis.
