Securing a future

South Korea, like Japan, is continuing to invest in research and development to guarantee its long-term future. All the major shipbuilders on the South Korean peninsula have R&D projects underway recognising that production will have to switch to more technologically advanced ship types, much in the way that production in Europe has had to change.

The Korean Registry has also recognised this and its research work has concentrated on larger containerships and gas carriers of both LNG and LPG varieties – the latter being of FSO type.

LNG carrier research has included work on both Moss type and membrane type carriers and has investigated the problem of sloshing in the latter. The work has resulted in the society carrying out global and cargo tank analysis, fine mesh and thermal stress analysis, fatigue life and crack propagation analysis, sloshing analysis and leakage estimation on Moss type LNG carriers.

Research work on membrane type carriers has included work on both GT and Mark III containment systems, fatigue analysis of deck openings in way of cargo dome structures and fine mesh analysis of the transverse ring. Sloshing analysis has also been carried out on this carrier type by the society, which has 17 LNG carriers registered with it.

South Korean yards themselves are also investing in their futures by carrying out a lot of their own research work. Samsung for example, has been investing in research work into sloshing in LNG carriers and has used random tank motion in time to predict the sloshing phenomena and the description of non-linear fluid flow to determine the response.

This has resulted in basic data for the structural strength analysis of the tank. The shift in emphasis can be seen with the diversity of R&D projects that Samsung has been involved in of late. This includes, LPG and LNG carriers, shuttle tankers, containerships, cable layers and drilling ships, FPSOs and ropaxes as well as bulk carriers and tankers.

Samsung has also been working on an artificial intelligence system to aid navigation. As the company explains, there have been many advances in the field of collision avoidance but these systems have been difficult to integrate into navigation systems because of high number of navigation rules and the difficulty of having to avoid obstacles for which information is uncertain in various operational areas.

Major research facilities in both South Korea and Japan are now working on solving these problems to bring artificial intelligence to navigation systems. These facilities include the Korea Maritime University and Osaka University.

The company also holds a number of patents including:

n A device that uses electromagnetism to reduce the surface resistance of a ship. It can be attached to the stern of a ship to alter the separation delay of the boundary layer thus reducing the ships resistance

n Another electro magnetic power generator that is attached to the propeller to control the flow direction of the hub vortex and rudder cavitation.

n A device for reducing the resistance in a moonpool of a ship.

Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering (DSME) has conducted seven research projects on LNG carriers. These include pre-building structure and vibration analysis, and sloshing analysis, which was jointly conducted with Norwegian class society, DNV.

The company has developed 11 kinds of automatic welding machines, allowing it to do as much as 93% of welding automatically on LNG carriers. The company also employs about 90 welding specialist for high precision welding jobs. These are subject to skill tests every four weeks.

DSME has also attached an operation training simulator to its Integrated Automation System for LNG carriers, believed to be the world?s first, which provides crew with experience of cargo and engine room control. The company says the simulator checks all risk factors that can occur during navigation and helps to ensure delivery of a stabilised system to ship owners.

Hyundai Heavy Industries (HHI) is now building both membrane and Moss-type LNG carriers; the first shipyard in Korea to do so. The situation has come about because two orders – one of which was for Golar LNG ? were switched from Moss to membrane type carrier. The yard?s membrane-type carrier design ? at 280m long, 43m wide and 26m deep ? is reputed to be the largest of its type. Cargo is carried in four independent tanks insulated with polyurethane panels.

The shipyard has also responded to the industry trend toward larger LNG carriers by creating standard designs for 135,000m3 and 165,000m3 LNG carriers.