603. Anticipated Weight Reduction of Structure Constructed With Welded Aluminum Alloy Versus Welded Steel

Paper

Abstract

There is no simple method by which the engineer may make an adequate comparison of the weight of well designed welded structures of aluminum and steel to apply to simple as well as complex marine structures. The existing ‘Rules of Thumb’ available in Marine Industry Literature, will result in moderate, sometimes acceptable, accuracy if applied to large predominantly plate structures, but will give very poor results if applied to small simple welded structures, composed principally of bar members.
It is the intent of the author to present a method whereby a more accurate result may be obtained for smaller or special designs by providing comparison data for the more common simple structures. This comparison data may be applied on a percentile basis to larger structures, for various aluminum and steel alloys.
The procedure is not complex, but will be laborious for large complex structures and will require some ingenuity on the part of the engineer. For these large complex structures the ‘Thumb-Rules’ will, certainly require less work and may give sufficient accuracy to warrant their use. The decision as to whether to use the structure breakdown or ‘Thumb-Rule’ is left to the judgement of the engineer.