SNAME Technical and Research Bulletin 4-7

While there are many types of thermal insulation on a typical ship, let us focus on
the insulation criteria and methodology for the selection and installation of semi-
rigid insulation boards on structural boundaries, such as the ship’s hull or shell,
bulkheads and decks.

The standard for determining hull insulation thicknesses, for both U.S. built
commercial vessels and Navy ships built to commercial standards, is given in SNAME
Technical & Research Bulletin 4-7, Thermal Insulation Report. This is indeed a
research report that is thorough and well-documented. It was founded on a series of
thermal tests that were conducted to determine insulation performance in
combination with two-dimensional angle stiffeners. In the resultant data, the
thermal requirements for hulls, bulkheads and decks are given in terms of maximum
allowable thermal transmittance values, or U-values. Insulation thicknesses are
then derived from those values. These maximum allowable U-values are given in a
SNAME document shown in Table 1.

To use Table 1 to determine hull insulation thickness, you must first know the
design temperature difference for the particular section of insulation. Using other
tables in the research report, you then can determine the surface coefficient
values for the particular air temperature difference, direction of airflow and
location of the air film. You then determine the thickness using still another set
of tables, based on those thermal tests conducted in the early 1960s, which account
for additional heat loss due to the presence of the rib stiffeners. These
insulation thickness tables go on for many pages, with different sets for
insulation thickness and choices for direction of heat flow, winter or summer
conditions, and boundary conditions (inside air to outside air, inside air to sea
water, inside air to inside air).

The tables are based on 36-inch stiffener spacings for angle stiffeners measuring 6
inches by 4 inches. Since there are numerous other stiffener spacings, angle
stiffener sizes and stiffener designs used in ship construction, using these tables
for insulation thickness determination can be difficult. In the SNAME document
there are, in fact, other tables for stiffener spacings other than 36 inches, and
these can be used to adjust the U-values obtained from the insulation thickness
tables. However, because they are premised on a single size of a single angle type
of stiffener, they cannot account accurately for the U-values for the wide variety
of stiffener design variables found in the decks, bulkhead assemblies and other
thermal boundaries encountered even within one ship.

For example, to illustrate a design problem, let us say that we are considering a
portion of the hull that separates heated inside air at 60 F from cold outside air
at 0 F during the winter conditions, giving a design temperature difference of 60
F. In this instance, there is no lining separating the hull from the indoor air.
So, Table 1 shows our maximum U-value allowed, for a temperature difference for
over 50 F, of 0.16. From experience, we know that the ends of the angle stiffeners
will need to be covered with insulation; it will not be enough to simply insulate
the plane surfaces of the hull. Flip through the pages of tables looking for the
configuration just described, and there is one that meets the maximum U-value
allowable of 0.16. For horizontal heat flow, winter conditions, for "Inside Air to
Weather Air," with 2 inches of insulation board on the hull and 1 inch completely
over the angle stiffeners, the table gives a U-value of 0.131.

Now, the contractor may consider that he could save some material and labor by not
insulating the angle stiffeners to that degree. However, if he were to leave the
stiffeners uninsulated, this would obviously result in a higher U-value for the
hull. To determine that U-value, one would look at Type 50, which has the same 2
inches of insulation board on the hull but none on the angle stiffener. There, he
can see that his U-value would be 0.326, a value that greatly exceeds 0.16.
Therefore, for this set of design conditions, the contractor will have to insulate
the angle stiffeners as well as the flat surfaces between the stiffeners to reduce
the U-value below