Development of Thermal Distortion Analysis Method on Large Shell Structure Using Inherent Strain as Boundary Condition

Abstract

There are two ways of conventional thermal distortion analysis. One is the thermal elasto-plastic analysis and the other is the equivalent forces method based on inherent strain. The former needs exorbitant analysis time, while the latter cannot obtain results of stress field and it needs much time consumption with loads modeling on curved plates. Such faults in two methods have made difficulties in thermal distortion analysis of a large structure like ship hull. In order to solve them, new kind of thermal distortion analysis method was developed. We devised that the inherent strains was used as direct input factors in forms of boundary conditions. It was embodied by using thermal expansion coefficient in commercial code. We used the pre-calculated inherent strain as thermal expansion coefficient, and endowed nodes with imaginary temperatures. This method was already adopted at hull block welding distortion analysis which was considered as impossible, and gave productive results such as reduction of work time in the dry dock.