Deformations on the ship sections during fabrication: cause and remedies

During fabrication process, material deformations are likely to occur due to various factors such as heat during steel cutting, welding induced deformations, lifting and turning of ship sections, temporary stiffening and other possible modifications of ship sections. Lifting induced deformations is one of the major causes of deformations that highly affect the production cost and quality. The aim of this thesis is to outline the main causes of deformations that occur in ship sections during fabrication and to analyse in detail the lifting and turning operations of one ship section using the Finite Element Method (FEM). A strength check using the FEM has been performed on the selected ship section to investigate the deformations and stresses in two different cases with three different loading conditions. First, the section has been analysed without temporary stiffening in three load scenarios: lifting before turning, worst-case scenario during turning and lifting after turning. Similarly, the second case study has been analysed but with the temporary stiffening added according to the lifting plan. Various influencing parameters that determine the lifting plan has been investigated such as the sling angle which directly affects the deformation characteristics. It is observed that the addition of temporary stiffening is essential to minimize the deformations and to maintain the stress levels below the yield point.

Effect of Steel-Cutting Technology on Fatigue Strength of Steel Structures: Tests and Analyses

This paper presents the results of comparative fatigue tests carried out on steel S355J2N specimens cut out using different cutting methods, i.e., plasma cutting, water jet cutting, and oxyacetylene cutting. All the specimens were subjected to cyclic loading from which appropriate S-N curves were obtained. Furthermore, face-of-cut hardness and roughness measurements were carried out to determine the effect of the cutting method on the fatigue strength of the tested steel. The fatigue strength results were compared with the standard S-N fatigue curves. The fatigue strength of the specimens cut out with oxyacetylene was found to be higher than that of the specimens cut out with plasma even though the surface roughness after cutting with plasma was smaller than in the case of the other cutting technology. This was due to the significant effect of material hardening in the heat-affected zones. The test results indicate that, in comparison with the effect of the cutting technology, the surface condition of the specimens has a relatively small effect on their fatigue strength.