Background

Ship damage stability failure represents 90% of the risk to human lives lost in maritime accidents, affecting over 2 billion people who travel on passenger ships each year and around 100,000 commercial vessels, operated by 1.5 million crew. Inadequate damage stability has been the cause of 53% of all vessel losses over the past decade and was the primary cause of 65% of losses in 2018. Most importantly, in passenger ships, the maximum number of passengers carried by the largest cruise ships each year has risen dramatically, almost doubling to 6,800 in 2019 compared to 1999. This means that there is now a far greater risk of passenger fatality from any given single accident. Analysis of 230,000 marine insurance industry claims with a value of almost $10bn between July 2013 and July 2018, shows that ship sinking/collision incidents are the most expensive cause of loss for insurers, accounting for 16% of the value of all claims - equivalent to more than $1.5bn over this period. Solving the damage stability problem for ships is the holy grail in naval architecture with a huge transformational impact on the design and operation of every type and size of ship and the whole maritime industry.

Building on four decades R&D at Strathclyde, leading to understanding at forensic level of the process of ship flooding post-collision/grounding accidents, a clear understanding emerged on the fundamentals of the problem in hand, namely (a) in 80% of probable flooding scenarios, most ships sink/capsize in less than 15 minutes as a result of inadequate initial stability (assured in ship design phase); this loss modality is referred to as transient flooding (b) in the remaining 20% of loss scenarioas, ships capsize/sink gradually in a time-frame up to a few hours; this loss modality is referred to as progressive flooding, with floodwater being distributed from the initial space in a ship to adjacent spaces until all stability/floatability is lost and the ship capsizes/sinks as a result. A rational approach to combating these two modes of loss would be (a) for transient flooding.

Technology Overview

The AREST systems relate to a series of active and passive systems, developed by MSI Ltd, comprising the use of high expansion foam to restrict and contain the floodwater entering the hull post flooding accidents. The deployable systems also offer fire protection as per SOLAS. A brief description for the various systems is provided in the following:

AREST P1: Passive Foam Installation - Permanent Void Filling

This is passive flooding protection system pertaining to the Installation of permanent foam in void spaces to provide additional reserve buoyancy when these spaces are damaged following a flooding incident. Upon installation, the foam adheres to the vessel steel structure and acts as a protective/anti-corrosive coating, prohibiting build-up of moisture between foam and ship structure, offering effective insulation.

AREST P2: Crashworthy Vulnerable Areas with Permanent Foam Void Filling

This system focuses on vulnerable areas where improved crashworthiness will lead to improved survivability. Structural crashworthiness analysis leads to reduced damage breach distributions at the area of application and the impact on ship survivability under specific flooding scenarios.

Improvement in survivability is significant and this is further enhanced by filling the void with high expansion foam to reduce asymmetry and to further enhance crashworthiness.

AREST A1: Active Foam Application - Deployable Barriers

Deployable barriers comprise two lightweight shutters made of fire resistant flexible textile, 30 cm thick. In case of flooding, the cavity between shutters is filled with expanding foam delivered from a compressed foam canister. This process can be guided in the most effective way, thus providing the vessel damage response team with the ability to actively suppress floodwater propagation by isolating the damage area following any foreseeable critical flooding event where progressive flooding is responsible for loss.

Stage of Development

Technology Readiness Level (TRL): 6

Benefits

Cost-effective

Applications

All types and sizes of ships

Maritime Safety Innovations (MSI) Ltd

IP Status

Seeking