Romania: Eversafe Marine Engineering Uses Marine Airbags to Launch Ship

On Sep. 2 Eversafe Marine Engineering company successfully re-launched a 6500 m3 LPG Vessel with marine airbags (ship launching balloons) in a Romanian shipyard.

Project information :

That vessel measures by 116 m long and 18 m wide with 3650 tons light weight plus 450 tons ballast water.

Something wrong happened to the 6500 m3 LPG Vessel side launching. That vessel stranded in Danube river, partly on slipways and broken slipping sledges.

In seven days Eversafe Marine delivered 26 pieces marine airbags which were transported to Romania by air. Eversafe engineers arrived at shipyard at August 21. Winches were first installed to fix vessel in two directions. It took seven days to lift vessel and remove all broken sledges from vessel bottom. Some practical difficulties slow down the process: incline vessel bottom made it difficult to install airbags in right position; limited space and mud baffled people to do cleaning.

When finishing the cleaning job people began to stuff ground under vessel and future launching area with sand sacks and steel plates. It is another hard working because of the water and mud. To get a 150 tons pull force shipyard combined a tug with bulldozer with pulleys. When the preparation work was ready pull back winches were removed. At that time the vessel was steady on airbags which agreed with calculation well.

At 7 P.M. of Sep. 2 the re-launching work started. With increasing pulling force the vessel began to move in lengthways direction very slowly. Marine airbags rolled forward arduously at the beginning. About three or four minutes later vessel’s stern began to slip from airbags at the same time vessel moved forward post. Soon vessel’s stern got floated but bow was still riding on airbags. At last vessel floated totally. From pulling start to vessel float the whole process took about 10 minutes.

[mappress]

Source: eversafe-marine, September 13, 2011;