ClassNK (Chairman and President: Noboru Ueda) has released a new revised edition of its Guidelines for Hull Girder Torsional Strength Assessment which comprise section of the leading class society’s Guidelines for Container Carrier Structures.

In order to respond to the rapidly increasing size of container carriers, as well as rationally address the latest theories and methods of container carrier design, ClassNK began to a comprehensive process to review and update its Guidelines for Container Carrier Structures in 2011. The Guidelines for Container Carrier Structures are comprised of a total of 4 separate guidelines developed to help shipyards and designers address a number of technical aspects of container carrier design, including guidelines for “Assessment of Direct Strength Analysis”, “Hull Girder Torsional Strength Assessment”, “Fatigue Strength Assessment”, and “Ultimate Longitudinal Bending Moment Capacity Assessment”.

The Guidelines for Assessment of Direct Strength Analysis were revised and released in September 2011, with the remaining guidelines expected to be released in the near future.

The revised edition of the Guidelines for Hull Girder Torsional Strength Assessment is available for free via the “Guidelines” section of the ClassNK website http://www.classnk.or.jp (user registration required).

ClassNK has also released a new revised and upgraded version of its “PrimeShip-HULL(DSA)/Guideline for Containers Carriers”, software designed to rapidly perform the calculations laid out in the new revised guidelines. The new version 3.0 of the software updates the version 2.5.0 of the software, which was released in December 2011, with new functions as well as a handy user assistance system to guide users through the entire calculation process. ClassNK will continue to update and enhance the software in order to improve its functionality and increase efficiency of structural strength evaluations in the future.