Overview on the digitized production of welded steel structures

This paper presents a concept and practical topics involved in digitized production. The term “production” denotes the design, fabrication, and service life of a product, which in this case elaborates on welded steel structures. This includes the required information for guiding all the process stages of the chosen material back to its re-melting, following the material flow in a fully digitized form. This concept enables an increase in production quality at a higher level while minimizing the risk of human errors. Automation of the short-run production of steel structures for demanding applications is also a key goal, together with securing a cost-efficient process. Typically, such structures are fabricated from high- or ultra-high-strength steels. Though challenging, reaching these aims seems to be realistic by applying advanced fatigue design methods, using high-quality robotic welding and receiving information about the real loading of the structure.

FATIGUE RELIABILITY ASSESSMENT OF WELDED JOINTS OF VERY FAST FERRY ACCOUNTING FOR VEHICLE LOADS

This work deals with the fatigue reliability assessment of a welded joint in a longitudinal stiffener of trapezoidal shape in a very fast ferry. Based on the analysis of wave and cargo induced loads the ship hull structure is evaluated. The local structure is represented by a longitudinal stiffener with a trapezoidal transverse section. The critical hot-spots and the stress distributions are defined by FEM. The fatigue damage assessment of considered hot spots is analysed accounting for the combination of wave induced and car-breaking transient loadings. The formulation for the assessment of the welded steel joint is based on the S-N approach and FORM/SORM techniques are applied to evaluate the reliability against fatigue failure accounting for corrosion deterioration. The structural system composed by several hot spots is evaluated as a series system based on second order reliability bounds.

Promising use of high-strength nitrogen steel for the ice belt of marine machinery operating in the extreme arctic conditions

This article shows the possibility of using high-strength nitrogen-containing corrosion-resistant steel grade 04Kh20N6G11M2AFB for the construction of critical elements and units of marine equipment operating at low temperatures, including the Arctic. The advantages of nitrogen-containing steel over clad steel AB2 + 08Kh18N10T always used in shipbuilding and welded steel of F500W category are considered. According to the assessment of testing of homogeneous nitrogen steel sheets, the level of its physical and mechanical properties exceeds the analogous parameters of traditional AB2 + 08Kh18N10T steels in a wide temperature range, up to –90°C.