PLANNING THE CARGO OPERATIONS OF A BULK CARRIERWITH CONTINUOUS MAINTAINING ITS SEAWORTHINESS

Abstract

The nautical safety of bulk carriers is largely determined by their correct loading. The available ship's instruments do not allow timely planning of loading operations and real-time control of the ship's condition during their execution. The ship's officers in charge have to spend a lot of time preparing the loading (unloading) plans. The high intensity of cargo operations at modern dry bulk terminals and the lack of sufficient time to prepare and verify the new cargo plan may create a risk of cargo holds being overloaded. This may lead to a deterioration of the local and longitudinal strength of the hull and a violation of the seaworthiness of the ship. The solution to this problem should be the development of new methods of cargo operations planning. Such methods should be based on a strategy of optimizing the distribution of a given quantity of bulk cargo, taking into account the availability of port facilities and the design of the vessel itself, its nautical parameters, stability, longitudinal and local strength. In order to achieve this objective, it is necessary to formalize the cargo operations in terms of a mathematical model of the ship and to establish the functional relationship between the parameters affecting the seaworthiness of the ship. Obviously, the development of this method is a promising area of scientific research aimed at improving the safety of bulk carriers.The article describes the method of loading operations of a bulk carrier with the task of choosing the best strategy for carrying out cargo operations according to the criterion of continuous seaworthiness of the vessel.Keywords: bulkcarrier, maritime safety, cargo operations, permissible loading, ship stability, the vessel strength, optimisation.