Structural behaviour of yacht fillers

The first part of this paper focuses on the mechanical characterization of fillers obtained by an experimental campaign specifically designed to obtain adequate information about coating products currently applied on yacht hulls. The final aim was to assess their structural behaviour as well as their interactions and effects onto the shell plating. Fillers may be considered as two-components particulate composites characterized by type, size and content of microspheres randomly embedded in a resin matrix. Hull and superstructure of yachts are covered by filler to obtain smooth surfaces necessary for faired and painted shiny exteriors. Simple tests were designed and carried out on several commercially available fillers: compression tests on isolated filler specimens and three point bending tests on specimens made by filler applied onto a steel substrate were considered sufficient to obtain an isotropic constitutive model characterization. Numerical models were thereafter built up to highlight some specific effects of the structural behaviour of plated structures coated by fillers.