Integral Steel Casting of Full Spade Rudder Trunk Carrier Housing for Supersized Container Vessels through Casting Process Engineering (Sekjin E&T)

Abstract

In casting steel for offshore construction, integral casted structures are superior to welded structures in terms of preventing fatigue cracks in the stress raisers. In this study, mold design and casting analysis were conducted for integral carrier housing. Casting simulation was used for predicting molten metal flow and solidification during carrier housing casting, as well as the hot spots and porosity of the designed runner, risers, riser laggings, and the chiller. These predictions were used for deriving the final carrier housing casting plan, and a prototype was fabricated accordingly. A chemical composition analysis was conducted using a specimen sampled from a section of the prototype; the analytically obtained chemical composition agreed with the chemical composition of the existing carrier housing. Tensile and Charpy impact tests were conducted for determining the mechanical material properties. Carrier housing product after normalizing (920 °C/4.5 h, air-cooling) has 371 MPa of yield strength, 582 MPa of tensile strength, 33.4% of elongation as well as 64 J (0 °C) of impact energy.

Keywords

• carrier housing
• casting steel
• mold design
• casting defects
• mechanical properties