• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers A
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• v.35 no.3
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• pp.309-316
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• 2011

Canoes are usually made from wood or FRP. However, today environment-friendly materials are preferred, and hulls made of FRP are prohibited in some countries. Polyethylene can be recycled and so is suitable for synthetic canoe construction. We used 3D Boat-Design to determine the hydrostatic properties of the canoe. Flow-structure coupled analysis was performed using ANSYS Workbench R12.1. The hull pressure and passenger weight were considered as canoe loading factors. The key parameters for the canoe are the design variables. The constraints are as follows: (1) The maximum stress must not exceed 50% of the polyethylene yield stress; and (2) the canoe weight must not exceed 50 kg. The optimal structural conditions were obtained by the response optimization process. The components of the canoe hull were manufactured from polyethylene pipes and joined by thermal fusion methods. Tests showed that the polyethylene canoe had better performance than existing canoes.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Precision Engineering Conference
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• 2010.05a
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• pp.861-862
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• 2010

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.14 no.6
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• pp.2559-2565
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• 2013

Material of boat hull has been used mainly with FRP composite materials until now. FRP boat hull manufacturing began to be restricted after the 2000's under international regulation on ocean environment safety. Shipyard on a small scale has manufactured polyethylene canoe and kayak hulls. Polyethylene has the melting point lower than the existing hull materials. Thermal stress occurs on outer hull surface when the polyethylene boat hull is exposed to sunlight. If it happens everyday, boat hull undergoes fatigue damage due to thermal fatigue. Therefore, this study presents the statistical fatigue life estimation on the HDPE boat hull subject to repeated thermal stress under three point bending condition.