Procedures for Welding Titanium Piping Helping U.S. Navy to Reduce Ship Life-Cycle Costs

摘要

The Navy Joining Center (NJC) is working with Avondale Shipyard, the Naval Sea Systems Command and the Naval Surface Warfare Center, Carde-rock Div., to apply high-quality and cost-effective welding practices to titanium piping on Navy ships. The Navy has selected commercially pure (CP) titanium in place of copper-nickel for seawater piping systems for the new LPD-17 amphibious transport dock ships. This change in material will reduce total life-cycle costs by eliminating the need to replace these pipes several times over the 40-year life of a ship. This will save the Navy millions of dollars per ship in maintenance and support costs. These savings will be increased as the use of titanium piping is expanded in future ship designs.