The National Shipbuilding Research Program. Leapfrog Technology to Standardize Equipment and System Installation

This section describes and outlines the ranges of various parameters considered for Equipment Installations. The various methods techniques and concepts of equipment installations to be later incorporated into the standards development are also discussed here. The equipment foundation and installation parameters were evaluated and a range for the variables was established which will be used to analyze and develop the standards. By bounding the parameters we have obtained minimax constraints and variations of the physical geometry arrangements installation parameters ship structure interface scenarios and effects of equipment installations physical locations. The equipment installations can be categorized into various standard foundation types. Vibtech has established 27 different standard foundation types which will encompass almost all of the equipment installation types for shipboard application (see Figure 4-1). Of these standard foundation types 3 are most frequent and are therefore adopted for the initial identification and bounding of the variables. These 3 foundation types are Grillage Frame and Truss (see Figure 4-2 Figure 4-3 and Figure 4-4). Other than the standard foundation types 18 different method mount types were also looked into to in order to bound the parameters. The most important issue addressed in this section is the development of improved designs that simplify the manufacture and installation of foundations and attachments (see Figure 4-5 Figure 4-6 and Figure 4-7) that may be used to rapidly install or attach foundations to the ship's structure. While foundation standards are important in and of themselves improved rapid attachment methods (see Figure 4-5 Figure 4-6 and Figure 4-7) will accelerate outfitting of foundations for equipment and will reduce overall construction time and hence the overall construction schedule.