Ingalls Delivers 'Zumwalt' Core-Composite Deckhouse Module

Huntington Ingalls Industries Shipbuilding delivers the 900-ton deckhouse structure to house the ship's bridge, radars, antennas & intake/exhaust systems.

The deckhouse is designed to provide a significantly smaller radar cross-section than any other ship in today's fleet.

Ingalls is building the composite deckhouse and hangar for the DDG 1000 class at the company's Composite Center of Excellence in Gulfport. Made almost exclusively using cored composite construction processes, the deckhouse and hangar take full advantage of the properties of carbon fiber materials and balsa wood cores. When cured, the composite structure is as strong as steel but requires little maintenance and is very lightweight. These unique attributes reduce maintenance cost over the life span of the ship due to its corrosion resistance in the marine environment and allow for improved hull stability, more payload and increased ship speeds.

The DDG 1000 Zumwalt-class destroyer is the U.S. Navy's next-generation guided-missile destroyer, leading the way for a new generation of advanced, multi-mission surface combat ships. The ships will feature a low radar profile, an integrated power system and a total ship computing environment infrastructure. Armed with an array of weapons, the Zumwalt-class destroyers will provide offensive, distributed and precision fires in support of forces ashore.

Ingalls' Composite Center of Excellence is a world-class composite manufacturing facility capable of building large-scale composite structures for the marine industry. Specializing in vacuum-assisted resin transfer molding for low-cost, large-scale component infusions, the Center of Excellence has more than 18,000 square feet of flat panel molds. It is also home to the world's largest numerically controlled five-axis saw capable of sawing, drilling and milling very large composite components to highly accurate tolerances.

Ingalls has already delivered the composite hangar and the aft peripheral vertical launch system units for DDG 1000 and has begun work on the composite components for DDG 1001.