A Fundamental Research on Development of a New Type Mechanical Connector for Large Scale Floating Structures

大型浮式结构物建造的最后阶段是多个单元在现场的连接，这些单元预先在陆地上的造船厂建造。当现场是公海时，希望开发某种机械连接器来代替焊接。这是由于这样一个事实，即相当高的精度的位置和姿态的单元需要预先控制完成焊接。本研究的目的是开发机械连接器，这是有用的，当天气条件是温和的一些上限的单元的建设。该机械连接器基于这样的思想，该思想包括将凸形结构部分落入设置在将要彼此连接的两个单元的边缘处的凹形结构部分中。在凹结构部分和凸结构部分之间存在空位，这是在比某个上界更温和的海况条件下允许下落所必需的。在2005财年，通过试验研究了由机械连接件连接的梁结构的刚度与间隙尺寸之间的关系。我是2006财政年度，一个半潜式模型，其甲板梁连接的机械连接器设计使用的知识，在2005年进行了测试，在坦克。半潜式模型的响应几乎与没有连接器的模型的响应相同。因此，所提出的机械连接器具有进一步发展的可能性。

The final stage of construction of a large scale floating structure is join of plural units at site, which are constructed at shipyards on land in advance. When the site is open sea, some kind of mechanical connector is desired to be developed instead of welding. This is due to such a fact that pretty highly accurate pre-control of location and attitude of units is required for accomplishment of welding.The purpose of this research is development of mechanical connector which is useful for construction of units when the weather condition is milder than some upper bound. This mechanical connector is based on an idea which consists of dropping a convex structure part into concave structure part settled at the edges of two units which are going to be joined each other. There a vacancy between the concave structure part and the convex structure part, which is necessary to allow dropping in the condition of sea-state milder than some upper bound. The vacancy should be filled up by some small size spheres made of steel, in other words, steel balls.In the 2005 fiscal year, the relation between size of the vacancy and stiffness of a girder structure connected by the mechanical connector was investigated experimentally. I'm the 2006 fiscal year, a semi-submersible model whose deck girders are connected by the mechanical connectors designed by using knowledge obtained in 2005 was tested in tank. The responses of the semi-submersible model were almost same as those of a model without connectors. Therefore, the mechanical connector proposed has possibility of further development.