In case of ship accidents, the ship's hull will inevitably suffer from damages such as holes, cracks, dent etc., which will threaten the structural safety of ship. It is essential to study the ultimate strength of damaged ships in order to facilitate the decision-making process of ship salvage. There are considerable publications on the subject, however, the impact of the induced residual stress and deformation are normally excluded in those studies. This paper therefore aims at investigating the effect of the impact induced residual stress and deformation on the ultimate strength of a stiffened panel through application of a nonlinear Finite Element Analysis (PEA) method. Firstly, a literature review on ultimate strength of damaged ships is presented. Secondly, a nonlinear numerical simulation is adopted to investigate the ultimate strength of stiffened panels accounting for residual stress and deformation. this procedure consists of two stages: the impact stage and the static stage. The results of the numerical simulation of both stages are validated through the results of experiments and simulations available in literature. Afterwards, a series of case studies are performed deploying the validated numerical method. Finally, a closed form expression to predict the ultimate strength accounting for impact induced residual stress and deformation is proposed based on direct simulation. Results show that the combined effect of impact induced residual stress and deformation can significantly reduce structures' load carrying capacity. The maximum reduction ratio reaches 37% in local stiffened panel. The method of removal of all the plastic deformation area is generally too conservative to predict the ultimate strength of a damaged local stiffened panel, which will underestimate the residual load carrying capacity of ships considerably.
