Objective
Inland shipping plays an important role in European transport by providing cost efficient and environmental friendly links for about 50 % of all transport volume between sea ports and hinterland. Additional opportunities arise with the opening of the Main-Danube link, the intensifying trade between West and East Europe and the need for replacement of obsolete tonnage within the next 15 years by efficiently performing inland ships of high safety standards and accessibility to shallow East European waterways. However, due to low freight rates over the past years the transport market turned to minimization of investments in tonnage replacement by importing ships and ship hulls of conventional design and marginal quality from cheap labour countries in East Europe. The inland shipbuilding industry in the Netherlands, Germany and Belgium, having failed to meet existing market requirements for low cost ships, low operating costs and flexibility to operate profitably along the shallow East European waterways, experienced significant loss of market share. A competitive edge can only be regained through offering of innovative ship concepts of improved "earning" capability. The main objective of the project is to develop an inland ship concept of at least 15 % better performance than currently operating inland ships in terms of fuel consumption and impact on the environment. The new concept will also improve utilization at reduced draughts and in shallow waterways. The main innovative feature of this concept is the introduction of diesel-electric powering. Specific fields of innovation and related objectives are: * on-board energy supply; introduce power management concepts to obtain a more economic use of installed power capacity; * propulsion; introduce electric propulsion concept by means of podded azimuthing thrusters to obtain better operational flexibility, lower maintenance costs and full operational capability at reduced draghts and in shallow waterways through adjustment of propeller submergence by means of lowering/hoisting mechanism; * ship body lines to obtain corresponding favourable hydrodynamic properties; * environment; achieve a 15 % reduction of fuel consumption and CO-, HC- and NOx- emission levels. The consortium comprises a complete industrial column consisting of five international groups: 1. Research institutes: MARIN (The Netherlands), Versuchsanstalt fr Binnenschiffbau Duisburg (Germany), Transport Institute NEA (The Netherlands) 2. Maritime manufacturers/suppliers: Ship diesel motors (Volvo Penta of Sweden), electrical generators (NEWAGE Int. of UK), switch boards (SEMCO of Denmark), powering systems (NEBIM of the Netherlands) and power management systems (DEIF of Denmark), frequency convertors and electrical motors (ABB Marine of Finland), propulsion systems and related components (Kvaerner-Masa Azipod of Finland); 3. Shipyards: 7 Dutch, Belgian and German inland shipyards; 4. End users/shipping companies: Chemgas of the Netherlands; 5. Approval and certification: Bureau Veritas(France), Germanischer Lloyd(Germany), Lloyd's Register(UK) Brite /Euram III areas covered by the proposal are 3B.l.lS 3B.2.2S l.l.l.S and 2.2.2.S. Addressed priority areas of the Maritime Industries Forum (MIF) R&D Master Plan are area 1 (Designingbuilding and maintaining: 1.1.3 1.2.1 1.3.1 1.3.3 and 1.4.3) and area 2 (Operation: 2.1.2 and 2.3.2) ref.15.
Fields of science
Topic(s)
Call for proposal
Data not availableFunding Scheme
CRS - Cooperative research contractsCoordinator
7940 AC Meppel
Netherlands