Skip to main content
U.S. Department of Energy
Office of Scientific and Technical Information

Ships equipped with pressurized cargo tanks supported on continuous shells

Patent ·
OSTI ID:6569419

A novel Spanish-developed tank support for single-barrier LNG cargo tanks uniformly distributes the tank loads, transmitted by the support, to the ship's structure without stress concentration. In this design, a continuous, suitably stiffened skirt is attached by its bottom edge to the top of the double bottom of a ship and beneath the shell or shells which constitute the support for each cargo tank. The top edge of the skirt, which has the same circumference as the bottom edge of the internal shell forming the cargo-tank support and is also opposite it, is attached to a suitably stiffened platform, preferably horizontal, which extends between the top edge and inner shell of the ship's hull. Between the skirt and platform are a number of flat plates perpendicular to the base plane of the ship and located opposite the double-bottom floors and longitudinal girders. These flat plates are welded at their top and inside edges to the platform and skirt, respectively, and at their bottom edge at the top of the double bottom; at the external edges, those plates opposite the double-bottom floors are welded to the inner shell of the ship's hull. The plates opposite the double-bottom longitudinal girders are welded to the skirt of the adjacent tank or to the terminal transverse bulkheads of the cargo-tank zone. With this arrangement, the vertical forces are transmitted from the tank support to the skirt as normal forces and to the flat plates as shear forces along the whole length of the weld seams.The horizontal dynamic forces are transmitted from the tank support to the ship's structure principally as shear forces which are distributed over the whole of the horizontal platform.

Assignee:
Sener, Tecnia Industrial y Naval
Patent Number(s):
US 3899988
OSTI ID:
6569419
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English