Abstract
Ship Blocks are assembled by welding, and among them, welding between large blocks (Pre-erection stage) is used as feature of butt. In this process, local material has a experience of thermal cycle and become finally shrunk. As for inconsistency of shrunk weldments and adjacent regions, ship structure would be deformed locally and globally. Thermal distortion analyses are done for control of these processes, and methodologies capable of ship block size among them are using 2-D shell element in FEM. A shell element takes charge of plate, so it has its thickness which is important for angular distortion by welding. By the way, a butt-welding consists normally of several passes, and weldment thickness are different at each pass. If a calculated final one-time welding shrinkage is acting on the shell element whose thickness is same as it of plate, then deformation value must be underestimated. This research developed a methodology that total deformation after multi-pass welding can be analyzed by one time at shell element having original thickness of its plate. We use the SDB thermal distortion analysis method and verified by several experiment. The both experimental and analysis results showed good agreements.