I watched a video of the building of a Mega Cruise ship. The engines were installed early in the construction process. As I watched the time lapse video, I thought about how deep in the bowels of the ship the engines were placed.
I began to wonder how they could change out one of the engines if it ever failed.
I am not involved in the maritime industry. Just a curious individual.
Thanks,
Marauderjoe
They swapped one genset in Oasis of the Seas through the bottom in a dry dock. The engines in modern cruise ships are either on the tank top or one deck above it. It’s not easy, but totally doable.
Yeah, I’d have to say through the bottom or side hull. You hope you never get to that point, but it does happen. They can do some amazing things with block repairs these days though. A sister-ship to a tanker I worked on threw a con-rod through the crank case, and they ended up repairing the block. About two years ago a drillship being built at HHI (forget the company, maybe Noble?) wrecked a generator on sea-trials and they replaced it through a hole cut in the overhead. Luckily drillship engines are at or just below main deck, and there is typically no superstructure to speak of above them. I have also worked on a ship where we exchanged large equipment through a hole cut in the side hull near the waterline without going to dry-dock. It can certainly be an interesting engineering feat, but again, most engineers pride themselves on not destroying high dollar equipment!
I remember my dad calling us from the ship where he was working, saying he’ll be a bit late from the leave because the starboard side Sulzer 6ZAL40 threw a counterweight through the side of the block and they’re proceeding with only one main engine. I visited the ship at the dry dock where they had disassembled the engine as far as practicable and then swapped the block through the side of the vessel. Some years later, the port side crankshaft was also changed, but at that time they just suspended the upper part of the engine from the engine room ceiling and made a smaller hole to the hull. The engines were located right below the deckhouse so they couldn’t make a hole to the deck.
Swapping a medium-speed engine or genset is easy, but have you ever heard of anyone removing a large two-stroke crosshead engine from the bowels of the ship? The Chinese did that a few years ago with their polar research ship, changing the Ukrainian engine to a Wärtsilä unit.
[QUOTE=Tups;188227]I remember my dad calling us from the ship where he was working, saying he’ll be a bit late from the leave because the starboard side Sulzer 6ZAL40 threw a counterweight through the side of the block and they’re proceeding with only one main engine.[/QUOTE]
The ZA40! Spherical bearing on the top end. So genius. I would love to get my hands on one. Wärtsilä must have the patent for this, nowadays? Why don’t they use it? Such a lovely lovely idea.
Welcome - to the gCaptain forum Marauderjoe. Thanks for joining.
[B][U]Here is some good info on ship engines if interested.[/U][/B]
http://gcaptain.com/ship-engines-hood-monster-engines/
[B][U]Have you seen this video?[/U][/B]
[QUOTE=Emrobu;188228]The ZA40! Spherical bearing on the top end. So genius. I would love to get my hands on one. Wärtsilä must have the patent for this, nowadays? Why don’t they use it? Such a lovely lovely idea.[/QUOTE]
Oh. Maybe CSSC has the patent now.
[QUOTE=Emrobu;188500]Oh. Maybe CSSC has the patent now.[/QUOTE]
Probably not. Wärtsilä only offloaded its low-speed crosshead engine business to WinGD, not medium-speed engines. I’d expect them to sit on any technology not used in today’s Wärtsilä medium-speed engines in order to avoid competition.