ABSTRACT
Aluminum’s use as a structural material in the marine world continues to expand. For aluminum vessels, the role of the weaker Heat-Affected Zone (HAZ) around welds under tensile loading complicates this response. This chapter presents the result of an experimental program focused on the tensile response of frame-to-shell fillet welds loaded in the plane of the shell, perpendicular to the weld. When considering the collapse of a large aluminum marine structure, modeling the tensile response of the HAZ is a challenge. Tearing in the HAZ requires a detailed material failure model which is atypical of traditional intact collapse finite element simulation. The experimental program was designed to capture the tensile response of a fillet-weld HAZ loaded perpendicular to the weld direction. Cross-HAZ hardness profiles were conducted on small specimens cut from each plate. HAZ configurations are common on marine structures, such as the welding of a transverse web frame to the shell plate.
