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