A Large and Heavy Cargo Transport System Designed for Small and Medium Ship Maintenance and Repair

Abstract

In order to cope with the significant decrease in shipbuilding market demand and shipbuilding overcapacity, Chinese shipbuilding enterprises are actively restructuring production and seeking new business opportunities in the ship maintenance and repair sector. Many small and medium shipyards lack large shipbuilding facilities such as docks. Therefore, they are facing great difficulty in switching to ship maintenance and repair business. The authors designed a practical and economical cargo transport system that is suitable for transporting large and heavy cargos (specifically, ships) in small and medium shipyards. The system design considers the market requirement and the characteristics of heavy-lifts material handling in the ship and maritime engineering. In this system, with integrated control technology, a hydraulic pallet transporter can dive to be under a ship, clamp the ship bottom and push the ship up. Automatic variable pumps are used to control the diving, floating, lifting, depressing, and braking of the transporter flatbeds. By using this system, a ship can be moved from water to land safely and smoothly for repair or maintenance, or moved from land back to water. This method allows ships of under 10,000 gas turbine (GT) to be repaired and maintained without docks. The system has been implemented in a shipyard. The case study demonstrates that the transport system can help bring in new business opportunities in ship maintenance and repair for small and medium shipyards, effectively improve ship maintenance and repair environment, and reduce maintenance and repair cycle time. 1. Introduction The maritime and shipping industry has been important to many coastal countries. As a major maritime and shipping power in the world, China has numerous ships of many types. Each year a large number of ships need scheduled service, maintenance, and repair. The market for ship maintenance and repair has a tremendous potential with the increasing revenue in the past years. Statistics have shown that in 2015, the ship maintenance and repair service in China has generated the revenue of 12.9 billion RMB (nearly US$2 Billion), and 3740 ships were repaired and maintained. This is an increase of 9.6% on the year-on-year growth rate. Table 1 lists the major shipbuilding enterprises in China, their ship maintenance and repair completion value, and number of completed ships.