Effects of Low Temperature on Mechanical Properties of Steel and Ultimate Hull Girder Strength of Commercial Ship

This paper presents the material properties of carbon steels for ships, and offshore structures (ASTM A131) are tested under a series of arctic and cryogenic temperature conditions. For material tension tests, among the ASTM 131 steels, Grades A and B of mild steel and Grade AH of high tensile steel have been used. The obtained mechanical properties of the materials from the material tension tests were applied in a 13,000TEU class container ship to define the effect of low temperature on the ultimate longitudinal strength of the target structure by using the ALPS/HULL intelligent supersize finite element method. The tensile coupon test results showed increased strength and nonuniform fracture strain behaviors within different grades and temperatures. Increasing the material strength resulted in increasing the ultimate longitudinal strength of the ship.