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The characteristics of fatigue crack propagation and the remaining lifeassessment of ship structures are investigated focusing attention on a curved crack pathdue to the effects of weld, complicated stress distributions at three-dimensionalstructural joints, and structural redundancy. An advanced numerical simulation methodis demonstrated for the remaining life assessment of curved crack propagation. Thesimulation method is based on a step-by-step finite element analysis. The crack path ispredicted by the perturbation method with the local symmetry criterion, which gives ahigher order approximation of the crack path, while the finite element re-zoning iscarried out by an improved paving method. Fatigue crack paths in the welded structuraldetails of the transverse girder of a ship structure are investigated so that one can findthe detailed design, which prevents the break of the plates forming a compartmentboundary. It is found that the present method may offer an efficient simulation-basedtool for the design of critical details.