Abstract
The U.S. Liberty Ship Building Program in World War II set a record—a total of 2700 Liberty Ships were built in 6 years, in order to support the battle against Nazi-Germany. However, numerous vessels suffered sudden fracture, some of them being split in half. This paper demonstrates and investigation of the Liberty Ships failure and problems, which reveals that the failures are caused by a combination of three factors. The welds produced by largely unskilled work force contain crack type flaws. Beyond these cracks, another important reason for failure associated with welding is the hydrogen embitterment; most of the fractures initiate at deck square hatch corners where there is a stress concentration; and the ship steel has fairly poor Charpy-Impact tested fracture toughness. It has been admitted that, although the numerous catastrophic failures were a painful experience, the failures of the Liberty Ships caused significant progress in the study of fracture mechanics. Considering their effect, the Liberty Ships are still a success.
Highlights
The U.S Liberty Ship Building Program in World War II set a record—a total of 2700 Liberty
Ships were sunk by means war, a for significant numberthe of representative them failed with sudden fractures raised questions
Fracture mechanics, which have only been developed after the occurrence of a series of unexplainable brittle failures, allows us to quantify the relationship between materials properties, stress levels, the presence of crack-producing flaws and crack propagation mechanisms
Summary
The battle predominantly of England and France against Germany during World War II caused a tremendous usage of resources in these two countries: mostly ammunition, food, oil and fuel. To support the battle against Nazi-Germany, the United States provided mostly England and France, but later Australia and New Zealand, which were fighting Japan in the Pacific, with various war-related supplies. Since all these supplies had to be transported across either the Atlantic or the Pacific, a large fleet of cargo ships was required [1]. In order to meet the demand for cargo ships, the United States started an emergency shipbuilding program in 1940 [2] In this program, 16 U.S shipyards produced over 2700 all-welded lightly armed cargo ships, tankers and other vessels between 1941 and 1946; all these ships are referred to as the Liberty Ships. Could only being possible owing theby simple mass production of another Liberty Ship, only being possible owing to the simple mass production design
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