Developing New Design Concepts for Passenger Ships' Safe Return to Port -Systems

摘要

During the last few years maritime safety has greatly increased its importance. In 2000, International Maritime Organization initiated a major development project for passenger ship safety. The work was completed and amended to SOLAS regulations (International convention of Safety of Life at Sea). The most notable reform was the addition of Safe Return to Port (SRtP) and Orderly Evacuation regulations during fire- or flooding situa-tions.SRtP regulations address situations where a space is considered lost or damaged be-cause of a fire or a flooding casualty (after the fire is extinguished or flooded space is drained and/or isolated). Therefore all systems associated with the space are considered not to be in working order. In these situations, the space of casualty should be isolated from passengers and crew and checked for damages. All damaged SRtP systems capa-bilities should be retained and possible Safe Area use for passengers and crew should be considered. The regulations are set as design criteria, not as operating criteria. All system retaining operations must be done during a recovery time set by the operational requirements of the ship. The ship must be able to return safely to the nearest port in a pre-set time, depending on the operational requirements of the ship. This thesis introduced the new regulations and their demands to the reader, using a built reference ship for concrete examples. The objective of the thesis was to find new design concepts for systems related to SRtP and Orderly Evacuation regulations. The concepts should be as modular as possible so that the designs could be used in different ship lay-out solutions.The development process starts by presenting the current regulations and used concepts of a chosen reference ship. The used reference ship is designed and built in Rauma shipyard and partially fulfils the SRtP requirements. These reference system concepts were analyzed, as well as the interpretations of the regulations and the ship’s operating procedures. Testing and support for the systems were also included in the review.The analysis showed that the ship’s operating procedures and current system designs did not meet in a desired way - despite the fact that the demands set by regulations were met. It also showed that interpretations themselves contained obscurities. Based on the analysis, propulsion-, fuel oil-, fire main-, sprinkler-, bilge- and flooding systems were subjected to detailed development process. The ship’s flooding system was used as an example for practical financial calculations.It was found out that all systems could be improved with different design concepts – most of them possessing modular qualities. Fuel oil system’s future concepts rely heavily on environmental reforms. Also, a ships overall readiness for emergency situations could be improved by system integration, better operating procedures and sufficient training by the owners and shipyard. /Kir11