A Large and Heavy Cargo Transport System Designed for Small and Medium Ship Maintenance and Repair

摘要

In order to cope with the significant decrease in shipbuilding market demand and shipbuilding overcapacity, Chinese shipbuilding enterprises are actively restructuring production and seeking new business opportunities in the ship maintenance and repair sector. Many small and mediumshipyards lack large shipbuilding facilities such as docks. Therefore, they are facing great difficulty in switching to ship maintenance and repair business. The authors designed a practical and economical cargo transport system that is suitable for transporting large and heavy cargos (specifically, ships) in small and medium shipyards. The system design considers the market requirement and the characteristics of heavy-lifts material handling in the ship and maritime engineering. In this system, with integrated control technology, a hydraulic pallet transporter can dive to be under a ship, clamp the ship bottom and push the ship up. Automatic variable pumps are used to control the diving, floating, lifting, depressing, and braking of the transporter flatbeds. By using this system, a ship can be moved from water to land safely and smoothly for repair or maintenance, or moved from land back to water. This method allows ships of under 10,000 gas turbine (GT) to be repaired and maintained without docks. The system has been implemented in a shipyard. The case study demonstrates that the transport system can help bring in new business opportunities in ship maintenance and repair for small and medium shipyards, effectively improve ship maintenance and repair environment, and reduce maintenance and repair cycle time.