Tugnology ’17 berths in Rotterdam

‘Man walked on the moon many years before they put wheels on suitcases’, the words of Mike Allen, conference chairman launching Tugnology ’17, and putting into context the subject of progress with technology.

The biennial two-day conference on the design, construction, operation and economics of tugs organised by The ABR Company Ltd brought together 400 industry leaders to debate tug technology. The event alternates with the ITS Convention, a similar biennial event organised by ABR.

This was the fifth Tugnology, traditionally held in Europe and follows five previous events at: Southampton, Amsterdam, Antwerp and London (twice). The venue for Tugnology ’17 was the World Trade Centre in Rotterdam a city needing no introduction for its connections with the towage industry.

The event, attended by MJ, was however more than just a succession of speakers and included a table-top exhibition with nearly 60 companies presenting products and services. Delegates had the opportunity to visit the Veth Propulsion factory at Papendrecht along with an evening reception on the Nieuwe Maas in Rotterdam where two port tugs were in attendance. The evening was stolen however by the presence of the immaculately presented new Rotortug training tug RT Borkum which was put through its paces and made available for inspection.

The conference timetable allowed for traditional networking opportunities and throughout the two days delegates were to be seen deep in discussion ‘talking shop’. Three mini-events took place with the signing of two newbuilding tug contracts and delivery of Robert Allan Ltd’s 1000th vessel.

THE TALKING BEGINS

Delegates were welcomed by Garth Manson, managing director, The ABR Company who introduced conference chairman Mike Allen followed by René J de Vries, state harbour master, Port of Rotterdam Authority who said he had no hesitation rescheduling his holiday to present the opening address. He reminded delegates that service providers including tugboat services, boatmen and pilots were the cornerstone of maintaining a safe operation within the Port of Rotterdam.

With formalities complete the conference got underway with Gijsbert de Jong from Bureau Veritas presenting a paper ‘Enhancing tug safety through internationally harmonised stability regulations’. BV has been pushing its Safety Guidelines for Design, Construction and Operation of Tugs including stability requirements up to IMO level and in 2016 amendments were adopted into the 2008 Intact Stability (IS) Code, a move described in the paper’s synopsis as ‘a major milestone’.

Mr de Jong highlighted the lack of international standards for tugs and the variety of statutory safety requirements for non-convention tugs below 500gt. A sign of the times is where the new regulations would include new innovative ‘novel’ tugs now appearing, a sector well represented in the table-top display area.

The second paper examined the subject of propulsion with Jacob Bryja, Dr Michael Potts and Manfred Heer from Schottel outlining future-oriented developments in azimuth thruster technologies, specifically its HTG bevel gears described as the new performance class in azimuth thruster gears.

Propulsion systems such as the Schottel Rudderpropeller have bevel gears in the upper and lower gearboxes with a natural desire to minimise the size of the lower gearing to limit the size of the gearbox housing. As part of its research programme Schottel has developed a unique improvement through a new type of bevel gear including gearing geometry never used before allowing a significant increase in load capacity.

Screen animations illustrated how together with gear manufacturer Bierens of the Netherlands and TU Dresden, an alternative machining solution using a 5-axis milling process has been developed, patent protected and now brought to market-readiness.

Next it was the turn of Joost Schot, Jochem de Jong and Robert van Koperen from Damen Shipyards who examined the use of CFD in modern tug designs. They observed that while robust commercial CFD tools are now available, such robustness should not be mistaken for accuracy, especially for complex flows found in drift situations adding that verification and validation of the solution is necessary to quantify numerical and modelling errors involved in CFD simulations.

They described the results of Damen’s research into such verification and validation for both drift and resistance with examples of how these techniques are used to increase Damen’s knowledge and improve TugSim, its in-house developed tool to quantify towing performances of Damen tug designs.

Remote monitoring is not new, the gathering of information now an accepted practice in many industries including power plants and commercial vehicles down to domestic appliances, the Internet of Things. A six-strong team from MAN Diesel & Turbo SE, and Digital Innovation Lab, both from Germany presented an interesting paper on how collection of such ‘big data’ leads to ‘smart data’ leading to operational fine tuning and benefits including: life-cycle cost improvement, safety, planned maintenance, performance benchmarking, emissions reduction, key component wear rates and improvements in long-term equipment reliability.

The speakers stated there are typically 150 sensors on a modern engine, MAN having 4,500 such installations in operation and detail was provided of the importance of ensuring that transmission of data across different networks (and continents) must be kept secure.

Next, Edgar Snelders and Joost van Eijnatten from Wärtsilä Netherlands provided a detailed introduction to a new family of steerable thrusters, particularly aimed at the tug market. Every aspect of meeting specific role requirements was discussed including: hydrodynamics, propeller configurations, ice conditions and controls. Options were presented for a range of bollard pulls from 30t to 100t with the first commercial applications already underway in an LNG tug and an OSV.

SAFETY FORUM

The afternoon session was spent in the form of an open forum entitled ‘The Challenges of Tug Safety’. The panel consisted a formidable line-up of experienced and knowledgeable representatives from the industry. Robert Allan (executive chairman RAL Ltd) chaired the session and was joined by: Dirk Degroote, product manager tugs at Damen; Carsten Nygaard, group marine manager, Svitzer Denmark and Captain Arie Nygh, managing director, SeaWays Consultants Pty Ltd Australia.

Training was a key area of debate and throughout the session comparisons were regularly made to practices in the aviation industry, one delegate remarking that the two roles (airline pilot and tug master) adopt different work profiles. The pilot's work involved intense activity during take-off and landing phases with perhaps long periods involving monitoring in between, compared to a tug master requiring consistently high levels of concentration and activity throughout a ‘flight’.

Of interest were various applications of day-to-day safety procedures involving: check lists; SOPSs and EOPs and an approach whereby intense basic training is provided but crews are not trained to do tasks in a specific way, instead being provided with a ‘toolbox’ of options to suit the individual tasks.

Captain Nygh recounted sobering examples of the consequences of accidents and Svitzer was praised for its initiative where weighted monkey’s fists were chopped off heaving lines and replaced with a more meaningful sandbag. All in, a fascinating and thought-provoking session which could have benefitted perhaps from more frank input from the vast pool of experience in the audience.

BEYOND THE CONFERENCE

Before moving on to day two, a mention of events beyond the conference hall. Thanks are due to Veth Propulsion who arranged a tour of its factory at Papendrecht on the day before the conference. Two indicators of Veth’s attention to quality were its ‘wall of fame’ with photos of 31 employees with 12.5 and 25 years of service under their belts and the extensive spares area whereby when a product is manufactured, additional examples are produced allowing immediate availability (and minimum downtime) should replacement parts be required.

Such gatherings often include contract signings or similar notable events and Tugnology ’17 produced three. A contract was signed between Sanmar Shipyards and UK company Targe Towing for a Bogacay class tug to be operated mainly in north-east Scottish ports. Another Turkish shipyard, Uzmar announced an agreement with RAL for construction of three tugs for stock: a RAve Voith escort tug, a DRAfter 2500/UZM shiphandling tug and a RAmparts 2300/UZM terminal tug.

It was also a very special occasion for Robert Allan with delivery of Østensjø’s dual fuel tug Dux (the first of three) from Spain’s Gondan Shipyard. Mr Allan proudly announced this was its 1000th delivery, a journey that started back in 1934 with construction of a 15m launch tug.

GREEN TUGS

Moving to day two, the first paper saw representatives from Dutch companies Offshore Ship Designers and RH Marine expanded on their podded-drive, flexible diesel-electric ‘e-tug’. The original concept, dating from 2010, was based around hydrogen power but as the technology was not proved to be mature the design switched to diesel-electric propulsion.

The paper highlighted the complexity of ‘green’ propulsion arrangements and in answer to specific questions it was stated modern batteries have a design life of ten years, the package having a payback time of three years. A fast load response of six seconds was reported avoiding running engines at full load and wasting thrust from pointing thrusters inwards. While there are currently no orders for the tug it was stated the principle was common in superyachts and ferries. Asked by the conference chairman whether fuel efficiency was a priority for the superyacht sector the speaker stated that customers were nowadays likely to be young ‘tech-guys’ from Silicon Valley more interested in fuel efficiency and emissions than for example Russian oil magnates.

Following the green tug theme, Brent Perry and Grant Brown from PBES Canada presented an interesting insight into the battery element of hybrid tug solutions. Designing batteries to meet a ten-year lifespan is difficult due to the variety of different discharge rates and other variables often leading to an oversizing of system capacity. The message was that with so many potential operational permutations, matching the battery provision with the operational profile was very important, cycles-per-day being the key measure.

Hideyuki Takahashi and Daika Ikeda from Niigata Power Systems continued the theme with a basic explanation of the characteristics and performance of its 28AHX-DF dual-fuel engine. Niigata has been involved in a number of different low-emission technologies including exhaust after-treatment and the speakers explored various aspects of the 28AHX-DF engine, available in various sizes up to 2,880kW MCR, including the debate between fixed and controllable pitch propellers.

Three representatives from MTU Friedrichshafen flew the flag for electronic diesel engine management control systems aiming to demolish the myth that engine electronics unnecessarily add to complexity of tug machinery. The importance of such systems in meeting emissions regulations was explained along with the potential to reduce lifecycle costs and simplify maintenance procedures. Delegates were also reminded of the benefits of close interaction between engine electronics and ship automation systems.

The phenomenon of directional instability from the trend towards high-power escort tugs with low length-to-beam ratios was explored by Barton Stockdill and Brendan Smoker from RAL. Fitting larger skegs was not considered an ideal solution, particularly when running astern as with Advanced Voith Tractors. RAL’s solution involves the fitting of so-called StRAke stabilisers, basically tube-shaped additions each side near the tug’s stern. This leads to a modified water flow around the bluff aft-end of the hull with convincing results.

The subject of tug stability was revisited with Govinder Singh Chopra from SeaTech Solutions International Singapore describing the consensus that the present IMO stability criteria is not adequate for tugs. The idea of introducing a limiting operability envelope approach to stability along with practical methods of assessing and monitoring stability during operations was explored.

SeaTech considers the new IMO towing stability criteria is a step in the right direction with a move towards an operability envelope a natural next step. The proposal also involves development of stability advisory software to assist operators with operational decision-making. Finally, the speaker suggested naval architects should be allowed more direct access to relevant IMO committees to provide the designers perspective and ensure requirements are realistic and suitable for intended operations, adding ‘we must not wait for another tragedy to raise safety standards.’

‘Going Green while Staying Lean’ was the title of a paper presented by Jonas Nyberg and John Shock of Caterpillar Propulsion International Singapore and Caterpillar Marine Asia Pacific, Singapore respectively. They consider existing and new rules on environmentally-friendly engine and exhaust after-treatment technology are putting obligations on ship owners ‘seemingly irrespective of the cost or operational complexity of the equipment concerned.’

Their proposal is for a methodology to comply with regulations but dispense with non-viable technologies resulting in the lowest total cost of ownership over time. Two case studies were explored for a 45m LNG terminal tug and a 50m, 100tbp offshore tug including comparisons between a top-down methodology approach and a methodology using requirement-based selection.

The final presentation for Tugnology ’17 saw Steffan D Nyman and Kim Kjaer from C.C. Jensen, Denmark discussing the subject of controlling and monitoring oil contaminants on tugs.

The taking and analysing of oil samples is a well-established practice, one advantage being the possibility of condition-based maintenance rather than maintenance and parts replacement based purely on hours running. The speakers described the three main types of contaminants: solid particles, water and oil oxidation/degradation products (varnish). Measures to ensure oil cleanliness were described with a reminder that oil contamination monitoring is not restricted to main and auxiliary engines but can include: thrusters, hydraulic systems, gear/clutch and stern tubes.

Analysis involves both visual inspection of the sample along with laboratory-based analysis but harking back to the earlier paper on remote monitoring the benefits of on-site oil monitoring coupled with web-based viewer platforms was explained. The cost of such systems will be an important factor for operators and the paper reported that return on investment is typically less than 12 months.

In summary, Tugnology ’17 was an extremely well organised event. The range of interests represented by those attending resulted in more than just a market-place occasion matching vendors with potential customers. The conference discussions involved parties from competing camps and the interesting (and perhaps most valuable) input was where delegates challenged and questioned the speakers. This trading of knowledge led to conference chairman Mike Allen reminding the audience of a new buzzword describing this mix of competition and cooperation – ‘coopertition’.