ADHESIVE BONDING IN HIGH SPEED CRAFT - WEIGHT SAVING TECHNOLOGY

摘要

Weight saving in high-speed craft whilst critical has probably reached a plateau in terms of achieving significant gains with currently used technology. Adhesive bonding is probably the only potential construction method that can offer significant weight savings. As well as weight saving, adhesive bonding offers other important benefits like reduced distortion, vibration damping and improved fatigue life. Weight saving in high-speed craft is critical to performance and operability. High-speed craft achieve high speed by operating above hump speed. Hump speed is the critical speed for a conventional ship and it can go no faster regardless of power installed. To operate above hump speed a ship must be lightweight, weight saving is therefore the most critical design issue for a high speed craft and failure to achieve weight targets will prevent a craft operating above hump and achieving high speeds. This paper will explore the concept that adhesive bonding is the most viable way left to achieve any real and significant weight savings in high-speed craft. Without adhesive bonding significant weight savings are not possible. Adhesive bonding coupled with other technologies (i.e. extruded panels, high strength alloys, friction stir welding, composites) can also help realise benefits long promised by those technologies.