Development of the ship hull assembly sub-process

Objective: The development of the ship hull assembly pro-cess is possible by changing the method of assembly of basic parts at the building site, which would shorten the duration of the process and lead to cost reduction. One of the pos-sibilities is to increase the dimensions and mass of basic building units, as well as the crane capacity at the building site.Methods: Ship hull assembly methods involving sections, blocks and modules are used in the hull assembly phase. In the world’s best shipyards, ships are built from blocks or modules, in which as much equipment as possible is in-stalled. This paper uses the finite element method (FEM) for structural analysis, and its results serve to define the opti-mal technological instructions for the vertical transport of ship hull structure blocks.Results: The development of the ship hull assembly sub-pro-cess can be achieved by using the hull block assembly meth-od instead of the hull section assembly method. For the ship presented in this paper, the mass of a block transported to the building site was increased 3 times, so the number of building units was reduced by 65%. This reduces trans-port activities on the building site and shortens the dura-tion of the assembly process by 20%. This paper shows that strengthening the block structure with temporary stiffen-ers is necessary for safe transport. It is possible to optimize their number and layout by using structural analysis.Conclusion: The development of numerical finite element methods, software packages, and computers allow wider use of structural analysis in solving engineering problems in shipbuilding technology. The simulation of realistic sit-uations, a wide range of analyses and a large number of results become possible, and they raise the level of knowledge and enable better decision-making in the pro-duction process.