Starting from the reality of the shipyard, Fincantieri indicated, during the first part of the project, eight candidate application cases and, after this, it mainly focused its interest, for further study, on two of them: fairing on the cruise ship (AC1) and external casing (AC6).
The first application case AC1is a fairing on decks for safety and comfort; the idea was to bond the aluminium alloy or composite GRP panels to steel bulwark stays, welded or bonded to the deck.
The second application case AC6 is an external aluminium or composite casings to be bonded to a steel or aluminium superstructure in the upper deck.
For each of the two selected Acs, a set of information were collected in order to have a complete scenario for the initial design of the join.;
Possible joints solutions/configurations were designed on the basis of the following information:
-The characteristic of the materials;
-The evaluation of the self-weight and external loads;
-The knowledge of the structural properties of the adhesive and the structural behaviour of basic simple joints.
The details of the application cases were given to the experts within BONDSHIP, which made recommendations for the design of joint details.
Additionally Sika in Zurich made screening tests with metallic structural materials and relevant "protective paints" usually adopted in FINCANTIERI. This was made, in order to determine suitable material/adhesive combinations and to select suitable cleaner and primer (surface pre-treatments).
In this phase strength calculations, for each of the two ACs, by finite element analysis were made in order to verify the structural feasibility of the design solutions; it was verified to have acceptable levels of stress and strain obtained for all loading conditions for each AC.
Considering also the benefits from both the economic and production points of view, the joint design was finalised.
The main partners involved in this activities were Fincantieri, Cetena and SiKa.
Result of these activities was an official Report: Deliverable Nr. 4-41-D-2001-01-0.
What it was to investigate about the ACs was the production feasibility and how to realise them.
In the middle of year 2, according to the recommendations of the partners, it was defined the production drawing/plan need to the completion of prototypes.
In the same time the production procedures for Fincantieri ACs were defined; result of these activities was an official Report: Deliverable Nr. 4-42-D-2001-01-0.
The fairing mock-up is constituted of three steel stay webs (Fe 510 /) height about 1 meter and two closed profile extruded panel.
The casing mock-up is constituted of an aluminium deckhouse (Alloy 5083) of dimension 5504mm x 2100mm bonded on a steel deck portion (Fe 510) of 5904mm x 3900mm.
The different phases followed during the assembly of casing and fairing mock up are contained in an official Report: Deliverable Nr. 4-41-D-2002-02-0.
At the beginning of year 3 the prototypes were completely realised; the bonding was realised with support of Sika experts.
Starting from this moment, several test on prototypes were performed (static,fatigue ,vibration and fire test) and some repair trials at AC6 were accomplished in order to be able to develop information and recommendations for users on the correct procedure to be used during the repair process. Official Reports: : Deliverable Nr. 4-42-D-2002-03-2: Test results from testing of prototype (Cetena); Deliverable Nr. 1-12-D-2002-02-0: Final report on fire testing (FiReCo); Deliverable Nr. 4-43-D-2002-02-0: Final repair guidelines (completed repair of prototype).
At the end, on the basis of the experience done during the prototype assembling, It was evaluated the economical benefit in using bonded joint instead of other typical joint usually used in the yard. Document Nr. 2-23-W-2002-03-0: Cost comparison (Fincantieri).