Designers of innovative ships must consider the adoption of unusual materials. We make a comparison between traditional (SMAW) and innovative (LBW, EBW) welding technologies in order to demonstrate their feasibility in shipbuilding. The 13Cr4Ni martensitic stainless steel with improved toughness has been chosen by Rodriquez Cantieri Navali for the construction of submerged lifting surfaces in innovative hydrofoils because of its high mechanical strength. Welding Procedure Specifications with austenitic filler materials have been developed to overcome the need of expensive post-weld heat treatments on large sized components: a limited decrease in strength is compensated by substantial economic benefits. Extensive experiments demonstrated superiority of EBW on LBW in terms of quality and robustness despite the intrinsic advantages of the latter technique in a shipbuilding environment.

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