Abstract
Inspections on board tankers contribute to the prevention of accidents, which can have a significant impact to humans and environment. Therefore a high amount of tanker inspections is performed by various stakeholders. This practice could be made more efficient by introducing unified inspection regime, which covers existing areas of inspection, eliminates overlapping and has the potential to improve safety. In this paper an important aspect in defining inspection regime, inspection interval, is determined considering contradictory goals: lowering the costs of inspection and increasing useful service life of tanker structure and equipment, without compromising safety. A probabilistic approach has been applied to establish inspection schedule, which fulfils a range of requirements. Due to the many varieties of tanker types, their conditions, range of size and age span, the paper focuses on the 10 years AFRAMAX tanker. Results indicate that optimal inspection interval in the unified inspection regime for that tanker should be 3 months. Using modified input parameters, similar approach could be used for other tanker types.
Highlights
Accidents involving tankers can result in considerable environmental damages, socio-economic losses, cleanup costs, research costs and other costs (Liu, Wirtz 2006; Paulauskas 2009)
An importance of efficiently implemented measures to prevent such accidents has been recognised by ship owners, flag states, port states, classification societies, insurance companies and cargo owners and research results show that safety qualities are the best for this ship type (Knapp, Heij 2017)
Current inspection regimes for tankers include inspections, surveys and audits performed by various stakeholders, such as those of the port and flag states, recognised organisations, insurance companies, cargo owners and ship owners
Summary
Accidents involving tankers can result in considerable environmental damages, socio-economic losses, cleanup costs, research costs and other costs (Liu, Wirtz 2006; Paulauskas 2009). A detailed and precise planning of maintenance, repair, or replacement of ship parts and equipment is one of the key factors for achieving optimum ship operations Since they are important part of the ship maintenance, the selection of proper inspection and monitoring activities plays an important role in optimizing service life and performance (Frangopol 2011). Implementation of inspections by recognized inspectors in the proposed interval could harmonize sharing and recognising inspection results among various stakeholders/regimes, reduce the number and duration of inspections and reduce the inspection costs and the workload of the ships’ crew. It would help ships’ operators in making key maintenance decisions, contributing to tankers’ safety regime.
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