Hyundai Heavy Industries (HHI) has secured a contract to build four 10,000 TEU ultra-large container carriers for COSCO, China's shipping company. These are the largest container carriers to be built so far. The ordered vessels will have the capacity to carry 10,000 units of 20 feet containers and will measure 349 m in length and 45.6 m in width. Each ship will be fitted with a 70,000 kw engine for a service speed of 25.8 knots. The ships are expected to be delivered in 2008.
In addition to this order, HHI has recently received orders for two 8,600 TEU containerships from Hapag Lloyd of Germany. HHI's backlog order for large container carriers over 8,000 TEU, totals 35 units. This represents approximately 35% share of the global large containership newbuilding market.
HHI's total order backlog now stands at 230 ships with the order value approximately US$16 billion, which will provide continuity of work for the next 3 years. This year, the shipbuilder is planning to deliver 70 ships amounting to 5.1 million gross tons (GT) and representing orders of US5.5 billion.The company is positioning itself to meet new market demands and this has prompted HHI to develop design for an even larger vessel - a 12,000 TEU containership.
And bigger still. Mega Container Carrier .13/10/05.
With an innovative design study for a 13,000 TEU container ship, Germanischer Lloyd (GL) and the Korean yard Hyundai Heavy Industries (HHI) are showing just how big container carriers will be in the near future. The ship is 382 metres long and 54.2 metres wide, and has a draught of 13.5 m. The 6230 containers below deck are stacked in 10 tiers and 19 rows, while the 7210 deck containers are stowed in 21 rows. Powered by two 45,000 kW engines, the vessel's speed is 25.5 knots. The design study is characterized by two technical innovations: the cooperation partners decided on a twin drive configuration and the separation of deckhouse and engine room.
New Ship Design. 9/5/06. Roadships America (USA) is developing new shipping capabilities addressing rapidly growing freight demand and the spiraling costs of highway construction and maintenance. Investigation of U.S. and international markets has demonstrated that Roll-on/Roll-off high speed vessels are not only needed in the marketplace, but that their entry is considerably overdue. In partnership with Aker Yards Marine, a proposed new generation Roll-on/Roll-off high speed vessel was designed to provide fast delivery of trailers in coastal and short sea trades.
The new High-Speed Monohull design, at 200 meters LOA, 7 meters draft and a service speed of 30 knots is appropriately capable of offering ready access to coastal ports and speedy delivery of cargoes. The design is similar to many traditional Roll-on/Roll-off vessels in that cargo is loaded via the stern of the ship through its upward-opening stern gate. The major difference with the Roadships concept is that separate loading ramps lead from the dock to each of the cargo decks, thereby eliminating internal ramp systems and enabling wheeled trailers to be loaded and discharged simultaneously to each cargo deck. Vessel and portside operations will be simpler and less costly than operation of single ramp Roll-on/Roll-off vessels.
Unlike traditional containerships, the High Speed Monohull benefits from having the majority of the cargo below decks and only a limited number of trailer units on the weather deck to reduce the amount of the cargo exposed to the effects of the sea. Wide, unobstructed cargo decks hold maximum payload and loading and discharging time is cut virtually in half with two-tier cargo ramps. Simplified docking also lends itself to automated mooring systems that will substantially reduce time in port.
| It is anticipated that these new vessels will revolutionize coastal highway transport make it faster and more competitive, and compliment existing truck and rail freight infrastructures. In its initial phase, Roadships intends to build a series of eight vessels – two in Europe and six in the Unites States for deployment in the Australian and U.S. coastal trades. |
Freak Waves Spotted from Space.
1/9/2004.
Over the last two decades more than 200 large carriers, cargo ships over 200m long, have been lost at sea. Eyewitness reports suggest many were sunk by high and violent walls of water that rose up out of calm seas. But for years these tales of towering beasts were written off as fantasy; and many marine scientists clung to statistical models stating monstrous deviations from the normal sea state occur once every 1,000 years. As part of a project called MaxWave, the European Space Agency (ESA) arranged for two of its Earth-scanning satellites to monitor the oceans with their radars. The shady phenomenon of freak waves as tall as 10 storey buildings had finally been proven, according to ESA. During a three week period they detected 10 giant waves, all of which were over 25m (81ft) high.
To prove the phenomenon or lay the rumours to rest, a consortium of 11 organisations from six EU countries founded MaxWave in December 2000. As part of the project, two Earth-scanning satellites, ERS-1 and ERS-2, monitored the oceans with their radars. The radars sent back pictures of the sea surface in a rectangle measuring 10 by 5km (6 by 2.5 miles), which were taken every 200km (120 miles). Around 30,000 separate pictures were produced by the two satellites during a three-week period in 2001 - and the data was mathematically analysed. According to ESA the survey revealed 10 massive waves - some nearly 30m (100 ft) high. Ironically, while the MaxWave research was going on, two passenger liners endured terrifying ordeals. The Breman and the Caledonian Star cruise vessels had their bridge windows smashed by 30m waves in the South Atlantic. The Bremen was left drifting for two hours after the encounter, with no navigation or propulsion.
In the next phase of the research, a project called WaveAtlas will use pictures taken during two years to create a worldwide atlas of freak wave events. The goal is to find out how these strange cataclysmic phenomena may be generated, and which regions of the seas are most at risk.
From 'MarineTalk Newsletter' 8/5/06. A British research team has observed some of the biggest sea swells ever measured. A whole series of giant waves hammered into their ship that were so big, according to computer models used to set safety standards for ships and oil rigs, they shouldn't even exist. When the RRS Discovery set out to sea, the crew was expecting stormy weather. Meteorologists had predicted a violent storm, and the scientists -- a team from Britain's National Oceanography Center -- wanted to observe it from up close. What they ended up experiencing went far beyond anything they could have imagined.
Near the island of Rockall, 250 kilometers (155 miles) west of Scotland, the Discovery's crew witnessed the largest waves ever measured by a scientific instrument on the open sea, according to an article the scientists have only now published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters. With a height of up to 29.1 meters (95 feet) from trough to crest, the single waves are the highest ever measured. In terms of so-called significant wave height, they established a new record, according to the scientists: 18.5 meters (61 feet). Significant wave height is the median height of a wave's upper third. It corresponds roughly to the sea swell that experienced sailors can estimate with the naked eye. Even more astonishing, the giant waves had not appeared individually, but in a group. Previously waves of such size were assumed to only appear alone.
The scientists think a so-called resonance effect was responsible for the monstrous waves: waves and wind travelled across the Atlantic at practically the same speed. The storm was able to pump energy into the waves efficiently for a long time, building them up to giant size. The new data may spell trouble for sailors and shipbuilders, the British scientists believe. Their research results suggest that giant waves may be much more common than previously believed. The waves observed were not predicted by the computer simulation, and this has implications for the construction of ships and oil rigs.
From "Marine Talk" Newsletter 13/3/06.
Replacement of Fully Automatic Twistlocks on Shipping Containers.
Deck equipment maker, MacGregor, is initiating the replacement of fully automatic twistlocks (FATs) with proven semi-automatic twistlocks for its customers. Somewhere between 400 and 500 containers have recently been lost overboard from container carriers in around 20 separate incidents, according to various industry sources. While the incidents are still being investigated, one common factor seems to be that the vessels involved all used so-called ‘fully automatic twistlocks’ (FATs) between the container corner castings.
