Structural analysis and design of a car carrier with composite sandwich deck panels

ABSTRACT

The paper presents the main structural aspects of the innovative car carrier being designed and built by the Uljanik Shipyard as a Newbuilding 513-514. To increase deadweight and reduce structural mass, vertical centre of gravity and fuel consumptions, three upper fixed vehicles decks have been designed as a hybrid concept, i.e. a combination of steel deck grillage and composite sandwich panels. Various relevant aspects and results of the case study are undertaken with the aim to determine a feasible structural design of the lightweight, cost-effective and easily installable composite sandwich panels intended to carry vehicles loaded on fixed decks. For a predefined sandwich panel geometry and interaction with the supporting deck steel grillage, structural capability and compliance with the relevant Bureau Veritas (BV) rules of various feasible configurations were evaluated, whereby structural response was determined using the finite element method (FEM) on the local (panel) level. On the global level, composite sandwich panels do not contribute to the hull girder bending, so longitudinal and racking strengths of the new structural concept have been evaluated using the complete full ship FEM model. Finally, benefits of the suggested concept have been summarised and compared to the conventional car carrier design.

KEYWORDS:

• Car carrier
• structural design
• composite deck panels
• FEM models
• structural mass reduction
• deadweight increase

Acknowledgements

Thanks are due to all members of the ULJANIK shipyard design team, especially to Đani Dundara as the principal ship designer (www.uljanik.hr) for the fruitful and long-term cooperation in structural design and analysis of complex ships. Thanks are due to Prof. Vedran Zanic for his support, enthusiasm and efforts to introduce decision support technique to ship structural design practice. Thanks are due to MSc student Ana Barisic for her help in the preparation of the global FE model of the new hybrid concept.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Jerolim Andric is an associate professor of Ship Structures at the Department of Naval Architecture at UNIZG_FSB. His scientific research work includes a structural design, analysis and optimisation of ship structures and development of applicable structural design methods and procedures. He has participated in more than 50 complex ship structural analyses and optimisations, using a finite element method for shipyards and design offices. His special interest is multi-deck ships (passenger vessel, RoPax, car carriers, mega-yacht, livestock carrier, etc.)

Stanislav Kitarovic is a structural engineer and a member of the board of directors of the MARIS NAVAL enterprise. His research work includes contributions to various aspects of the geometrically and materially (non)linear structural response and adequacy analysis of various (non)isotropic thin-walled structures. He participated in a number of collaborative and unilateral projects and case studies related to structural design and analysis of the ship structures and (co)authored a number of conference and journal papers.

Vito Radolović is Naval Architect. He has worked at Uljanik shipyard for more than 10 years as a senior designer in Shipyards Design Office. He has experience in ship and structural design of various types of vessels and specifically in composite structure design and fire safety assessment according to SOLAS prescriptive rules for alternative design of cargo space on RO-RO vessels (JEC innovation award 2018). He is working as a senior designer and one of the key personnel in the research and development activities. From 2018, he is working at Flow ship design as a senior designer.

Pero Prebeg is an assistant professor at the Department of Naval Architecture and Offshore Engineering, Faculty of Mechanical Engineering and Naval Architecture, University of Zagreb. His research interest includes ship structural optimisation, surrogate modelling, multilevel optimisation, ship structural design software development and high-performance computing. He participated in more than 10 national and international research projects. He is one of the main authors and the main developer of OCTOPUS Designer, the framework for ship structural design support.

ORCID

Jerolim Andric http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5968-5807