Structures and Materials

Research activities in the fiels of Ship Structures and Materials is focused on three main topics:

Response of ship structures to impulsive loads

A number of national and international research projects have been and are being carried out to set up tools and procedures to predict the response of the ship to impulsive loads, both due to the waves and to shock and blast.

An effort of validation of the numerical predictions has been made through estensive ship monitoring campaigns involving both naval vessels and passenger vessels.

Fatigue

In the frame of an international cooperation a new procedure is being set up and tested to relate fatigue to the ship operational profile and the statistics of weather conditions in her operative area.

Composite materials

In the past few years CETENA has built up a special know how on composite materials thanks to participation to EU R&D projects. Today, most of the research effort is carried out in the IMAST Consortium (see www.imast.it) and is focused on the study of composite materials' response to fire and balistic aspects, in view of a more estensive use of these materials on board ships.

It is to be mentioned that the Structures and Materials Department of CETENA is involved in various ISSC working groups, specifically the LOADS and ULTIMATE STRENGTH working groups; and is an active member of the MARSTRUCT Network of Excellence (see Networking page).