The Ultimate Challenge in Big Ship Age

In recent years, large ships bring about a series of transformation measures for global ports. While competing for the hub port, the port authorities should solve safety problems urgently. In November last year, a large containership collided with a crane in Suez Canal container terminal, causing the crane to collapse on the ship. For fear of the collapse risk of bridge crane,the 368-meter long ship was ordered not to move and was laid up at the accident scene for several days. After the accident, not only the schedule of this ship but also the port operation was influenced seriously.

A super large containership was involved in a collision accident with the gantry crane upon departure. According to the information, the struck of the bridge crane’s arm shelf on the containers on the dock left over 20 containers on fire and injuries. An insider pointed out that the two ships involved in the accidents were all super large containerships and there was only six months in between, such a high accident frequency has forced port authorities to reconsider the aftermath ability and other related problems.

In June this year, the world’s largest lock canal—the panama canal’s expansion project will be finished officially. The reporter understood in the interview,many large shipping companies are still “determined” to give up panamax vessels and use super large ships. The experts said that safety and cost factors will be related.

For a long time, the industry has paid attention to the safety problems of super large containerships. An insider once said that if the “monster” is involved in grounding or collision or even loss due to human negligence or force majeure, the loss would be disastrous. In view of the maximum capacity of more than 10,000 tons for such ships, as big as a small tanker, how to operate ships with such a large deadweight, large displacement and large inertia and to avoid marine environment pollution and marine accident which could be beyond calculation has become the focus of the concern of the industry.

In the interview, the experts also mentioned the characteristics of super large ships being easily affected by turbulence. Because the super large containership is very long, it would be affected by shear flow when it sails through the complicated flow field, making the head and stern affected by different intensity and different direction flow and leading to the steering getting worse or even disappear in a period, and the current sailing direction can not be maintained, or have difficulties in changing the direction. If this occurs in the heavy traffic areas, accidents could happen suddenly, and cause potential risks to sailing safety.