Ship Structures and Materials
Learn to read a ship the way its designers do — from the loads trying to break it, to the materials and structure holding it together, to the long-term threats that accumulate over decades at sea.
About this course
A ship is not a rigid object. It is a hollow steel girder, flexing continuously in waves, carrying loads that shift with every sea state, every cargo configuration, and every weapons effect. Most engineers who work on ships learn this late, if at all. This course builds that structural intuition from the ground up — starting with how to model a ship as a beam, construct shear force and bending moment diagrams, and trace how primary loads drive the decisions that shape a hull's architecture.
From there, the course moves through the materials and structural systems that actually resist those loads. You will learn the difference between transverse and longitudinal framing and why that choice matters more than the amount of steel you use. You will learn why HY-80 steel exists, why the Navy shifted toward HSLA grades, and what the Falklands War taught designers about aluminum topside structures. These are not historical footnotes — they are the lessons that got built into current design practice.
The final third of the course covers what happens after the ship is built. Fatigue, corrosion, and shock loading are not failure modes to worry about at launch; they are the slow, cumulative forces that determine whether a structure survives 30 years of hard use. By the end, you will be able to calculate bending stress in a midship section, read a finite element analysis output critically, and understand how structural decisions made at the design stage ripple through a warship's entire service life.
Details
Skills you'll learn
Structural Load Analysis
Construct shear force and bending moment diagrams for a ship hull and identify how hogging, sagging, and dynamic loads drive primary structural design decisions.
Framing System Evaluation
Compare transverse and longitudinal framing philosophies and explain how the arrangement of structural members affects a hull's resistance to bending and buckling.
Naval Materials Selection
Evaluate structural steels, aluminum alloys, and composites against real-world trade-offs — weldability, fire survivability, magnetic signature, and cost — to justify material choices for different parts of a warship.
Bending Stress Calculation
Calculate section modulus and bending stress for a ship's midship cross-section, distinguishing which structural members contribute effectively to the hull girder.
Long-Term Structural Assessment
Identify how fatigue crack initiation, corrosion mechanisms, and shock loading interact over a ship's service life and recognize the design features that mitigate each threat.
Syllabus
5 units • 11 lessons • 5 assessments
Learning activities
Every lesson gives you several ways to learn.
Frequently asked questions
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