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

大型浮式结构施工的最后阶段是多个单元的现场连接，这些单元提前在陆上船厂进行施工。当场地在海上时，需要开发某种机械连接器来代替焊接。这是由于这样一个事实，相当高度精确的预先控制的位置和单位的态度是需要完成焊接。本研究的目的是开发一种适用于气候条件较温和的机组施工的机械连接件。这种机械连接器是基于这样一种想法，即将一个凸结构部件放入凹结构部件中，凹结构部件固定在两个将要连接在一起的单元的边缘。凹结构部分和凸结构部分之间有一个空位，这是在海况条件下允许下降的必要条件。这个空缺应该由一些小尺寸的钢球来填补，换句话说，就是钢球。2005财政年度，对由机械连接件连接的梁结构的空位大小与刚度之间的关系进行了试验研究。在2006财年，利用2005年获得的知识设计的机械连接件连接甲板梁的半潜式模型在水箱中进行了试验。半潜式模型的响应与无接头模型的响应基本相同。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.