Report: DDG 51 class ‘buckling’ under stress

[unhappycamper]

Report: DDG 51 class ‘buckling’ under stress
Staff report
Posted : Thursday Oct 11, 2007 17:08:15 EDT

More than a dozen Arleigh Burke-class destroyers have suffered “significant” structural damage in rough seas because designers didn’t account for the effect of “bow slams” on the ships’ hulls, Navy documents said — and they said fixing the problem could cost almost $63 million.

A Navy PowerPoint presentation, obtained by Navy Times, confirmed a report Thursday in the British defense publication Jane’s revealing the design problems in the Burke class.

Support beams and other structures inside the destroyers warp so much from the stress of withstanding high seas that they must be cut out and replaced, even in new ships — the destroyer Gridley, commissioned in February, already underwent repairs in September. The report described the damage common to 13 ships, in both “Flight I” and “Flight II” variants of the destroyer. Later Flight II ships have their own helicopter hangars and slightly different weaponry than earlier destroyers in the class.

“Damage ranges from local buckling of deck transverse beams and shell web frames and shell longitudinals resulting in several inches of permanent deformation,” said one slide in the presentation.

Internal structure warping is not uncommon among surface warships; the Navy’s cruisers and frigates have gone into shipyards for hull stiffening repairs.


Rest of article at: http://www.navytimes.com/news/2007/10/navy_ddgs_buckling_071011w/

[Journeyman]

1. So the designers didn't account for the sea in their design for ocean-going warships? . . .

I wonder where those shipwrights are going to come up with $63 million. We certainly shouldn't have to foot the bill to amend their ignorance. . .

[MADem]

2. WTF is WRONG with those guys? Are they using those fancy test pools they've

got for what, pool parties?

ASSHOLES! They oughta hold the designers personally and pecuniarily liable.

Of course, one might opine that the BURKIES are a metaphor for the entire DOD, nowadays.

Mike Mullen must be pissed....

[DCKit]

3. They didn't learn ANYTHING from the merchant ships built for WWII that broke in half?

All for the lack of a simple steel band around the upper hull as reinforcement.

Sorry, they had a specific name for the class, but I forgot it.

Finally, aren't they supposed to do sea trials on prototypes before building a fleet? Some Repuke contributor/contractor is going to make a billion off this one.

[Thothmes]

4. Sea Trials

They do sea trials on all new construction ships. However not on the sea trial test plan is to run in a Noreaster.

[BrotherBuzz]

5. The Liberty ship

Liberty Ships were the first all-welded pre-fabricated cargo ships and were mass produced in the United States. 2,751 Liberty Ships were built between 1941 and 1945. Only two now remain afloat, many of the remainder were destroyed by cracking of the type shown. Photograph courtesy of the Principle and Fellows of Newnham College, Cambridge.

On edit: It was originally thought that the flaw was in the design, but it was shown in Cambridge that the flaw was the steel used to make them: the steel was subject to fractured when it was encountered freezing seawater.