Cyclic loading of ship structures can result in multiple cracks at fatigue-prone details. While these cracks are generally considered a nuisance, they can result in catastrophic failure if left unrepaired. On the other hand, periodic inspection and repair of these cracks can result in a large financial burden. Accordingly, careful scheduling of inspection and repair of the cracks is needed to avoid catastrophic failures while ensuring low cost. Life-cycle analysis offers a reasonable means to establish cost-effective scheduling of maintenance and repair strategies for civil and marine infrastructure. Studies exist on life-cycle cost frameworks for the assessment and repair of multiple fatigue cracks utilizing non-linear optimization strategies. In this study, we establish a new probabilistic life-cycle cost framework that improves on existing approaches by utilizing the concept of entropy to determine optimal inspection and repair scheduling for ship structures with multiple cracks. The parameters influencing the propagation rate of the cracks are considered random variables with predefined statistical distributions. A parametric study is conducted to assess the impact of some parameters, such as design life and loading cycles on the obtained life-cycle cost. The results show stark improvement in achieving optimal scheduling of inspection and repair with low cost over traditional optimizations.

船舶结构的循环载荷可能会导致容易疲劳的细节处出现多处裂纹。虽然这些裂缝通常被认为是令人讨厌的，但如果不加以修复，它们可能会导致灾难性的故障。另一方面，定期检查和修复这些裂缝可能会导致巨大的经济负担。因此，需要仔细安排裂缝的检查和修复，以避免灾难性故障，同时确保低成本。生命周期分析提供了一种合理的方法，可以为民用和海洋基础设施制定具有成本效益的维护和维修策略安排。目前存在关于利用非线性优化策略评估和修复多个疲劳裂纹的生命周期成本框架的研究。在这项研究中，我们建立了一个新的概率生命周期成本框架，通过利用熵的概念来改进现有方法，以确定具有多个裂纹的船舶结构的最佳检查和维修计划。影响裂纹扩展速率的参数被视为具有预定义统计分布的随机变量。进行参数研究以评估某些参数（例如设计寿命和加载周期）对获得的生命周期成本的影响。结果表明，与传统优化相比，以较低的成本实现检查和维修的优化调度有了显着改进。影响裂纹扩展速率的参数被视为具有预定义统计分布的随机变量。进行参数研究以评估某些参数（例如设计寿命和加载周期）对获得的生命周期成本的影响。结果表明，与传统优化相比，以较低的成本实现检查和维修的优化调度有了显着改进。影响裂纹扩展速率的参数被视为具有预定义统计分布的随机变量。进行参数研究以评估某些参数（例如设计寿命和加载周期）对获得的生命周期成本的影响。结果表明，与传统优化相比，以较低的成本实现检查和维修的优化调度有了显着改进。