Fire Integrity in Advanced Ship Structures

A fully coupled fire simulation and thermal-mechanical response and damage prediction tool will be developed by enhancing, packaging, and integrating our existing solution modules as an add-on tool kit for a commercial finite element solver such as ABAQUS. This tool will for the first time be able to model the fluid-structure coupled response of an advanced ship structure to a fire environment and synergistic interaction of multiple failure modes and their compounding effects that contribute to the final catastrophic failure. GEM has secured commitments for technical support from NGSS, Boeing, SIMULIA, University at Buffalo, and Virginia Tech, who will provide supporting data, solution modules, direct coupling, and expertise. The multi-faceted study consists of: 1) direct coupling between a 3D CFD fire simulator with the ABAQUS’ structural solver; 2) enhancement of the current material characterization module by including creep and creep rupture behavior; 3) characterization of damage initiation and failure progression via a hybrid damage model; 4) development of an advanced GUI for fire damage assessment toolkit; 5) validation of the resulting tool using the coupon and structural data provided by NGSS and Boeing and collected from the NICOP program; and 6) commercialization of the finial Phase II software product.