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Achievements
State of the art
The members of the BONDSHIP consortium have made substantial progress in
adapting adhesive bonding to the needs of shipbuilding. The work carried out in
the project has enabled us to document the whole new building process and has
given us some insight into the in-service phase. The main limitation here is
that success is measured over decades rather than months or years – very
difficult to achieve for a 3 year project!
Breakthroughs
The BONDSHIP project has achieved considerable breakthroughs:
 | The project members generated a wealth of test data under typical
“ship” conditions both for short term performance (strength) and long-term
performance (fatigue, ageing and creep), |
| We have a number of documented Application Cases (ACs) which
includes joint specification, design and modelling and full scale testing of
joints, production procedures, and production experience, |
| We have carried out modelling benchmarks for analytical and
numerical methods to establish their validity and confirm their strengths and
limitations, |
| Project members have developed solutions for fire protection of
bonded joints and have confirmed their performance experimentally , |
| Non-destructive testing methods have been applied to bonded joints
to demonstrate their capabilities. We have developed relevant NDT test
protocols, |
| We have shown that bonding can be cost effective – the main saving
is usually a reduction in production time; material costs tend to be higher, |
| We have developed an approval scheme for bonded joints that also
takes into account the uncertainties of the long-term performance of bonded
joints, |
| Perhaps the most important single result is the
BONDSHIP guidelines. They are a
summary of the experience from the work in the project and will be published
as public document. |
Outlook
In summary, we have demonstrated that adhesive bonding is feasible in
shipbuilding. What is needed now is to move from pre-competitive research to
product development. The main challenge here is that it may take time before
adhesive bonding will be taken up as a general joining method – all new joining
methods have taken years to establish themselves in shipbuilding. However, the
publication of the BONDSHIP guidelines, the most comprehensive guidelines of its
kind, will help to spread the use of adhesive bonding in shipbuilding outside
the BONDSHIP consortium and thus create a critical mass of users.
last edited:
28.02.2006
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