Design Methods For Anchor Windlass Supporting Structures

As the windlass is the power originator of anchoring system and has to withstand loads coming from the chain and green water during ship’s operation, most naval architects have been aware of the design of windlass support structures and structural safety check of these support structures are mandatory based on society’s roles. While in the common process, lacking of suitable guidelines, the design of support structures is complying with the parent ship or the designer’s personal experience and structural styles has many drawbacks like cumbersome design process, complex production process and duplication of structures’ function. Thus, this dissertation is concentrating on design method of anchor windlass support structures and improvement in structural styles.According to the relevant documentation and the results of practical learning, this paper systematically summarize the structural styles and design methods of regular windlass supporting structures. The arrangement of the support structure, load calculation and distribution and the finite element method are described in detail。Modern design methods, represented by integral and modular design, have been widely used in the field of mechanical industry, which can effectively reduce the development cycle of mechanical equipment and manufacturing costs. At the same time, these new design methods have been gradually recognized by naval architects.To improve the structural style of traditional anchor windlass support structures, integrated design method is applied to combine the support structures on the deck and the enforcement structures under the deck. The new design will only lay integral support structures on the downside of the deck. Compared with original structural forms, both the calculated stress and weight of the integral support structures are reduced, which verify integral support structures’ feasibility.Based on the design and manufacture of the anchor windlass support structures and installation process of the windlass on the deck, a modular design concept of the windlass support structure is proposed applying the modular design method together with the new structural style. According to the study results, the new support structural modular not only meets the strength requirements but also simplifies the construction process and reduces the weight, thus has a good practical value. Thus on ANSYS software platform, APDL language is used to develop the parametrical windlass supporting structures’ design modules designed to parametrically build structures model, calculate loads and check the strength. Through the combination of the modules, a usefully quick design method of different type of windlass supporting structures is achieved.This paper is based on the existing anchor windlass support structures" styles and design method, and applies a variety of design methods to improve the support structures; as a consequence, these new structures has achieved good practical effects. The new structural styles and design concepts can also be applied to the design of other mechanical support structures on deck.