DWT35,000 cargo ship “Wuzhou 05” launched with marine airbags

Marine airbag ship launching projects are commonplace but to launch a big vessel is still an exciting work. “ Five continents 05” measures 178 meters long and 28 meters width, its launching weight is 9,000 tons. This vessel is built on a 0.01 radian concrete slipway which has abrupt down end, a very dangerous structure for marine airbag ship launching. The drafts of stern and bow are 4.2 meters and 2.4 meters respectively.

The difficulties of this launching project are as follows: bad slipway, heavy weight, long length. A vessel will not start to move relying on gravity’s slipping down component of gravity force if its inclined angle is 0.01 radian. Long vessel will need careful arrangement of marine airbags to ensure the safety of hull structure.

After negotiating with shipyard, Eversafe engineers supervised the modification of slipway end structure and got two tugboats to handle with any emergency during the launching. At June 14 Evergreen team began to inflate well arranged marine airbags to raise vessel and remove wooden blocks. Firstly, eight pieces marine airbags under the bow were inflated to be 0.20 MPa pressure then twenty pieces marine airbags were inflated to be 0.18 Mpa and left airbags were inflated to be 0.16 Mpa. So the vessel was lifted by total 48 pieces marine airbags easily.

As the high tide time of June 15 is at 9 AM the launching time is set at 8:45. In the morning of Jun 15, Eversafe team began to adjust pressures of 20 pieces marine airbags under stern to be 0.12 Mpa and 28 pieces marine airbags under bow to be 0.2 Mpa. Then the vessel got an approximate 0.013 radian inclined angle. At 8:40 am, people began to chop up the steel ropes which were attached to winches to pull ship to avoid unexpected slip. As soon as the ropes broke down vessel started to move into water by riding rolling marine airbags smoothly. It took 2 minutes from the vessel’s movement start to fully float.

From this ship launching project people can easily find irrefutable evidence of Evergreen marine airbags’ excellent quality. During the vessel lifting up period, pressures of eight pieces marine airbags reach 0.2 Mpa and holding these pressures more than 10 hours. It means each marine airbag bears more than 300 tons weight and no air leakage occurs in 10 hours.

Evergreen Maritime is devoted to be excellence. Up to date technology and new material are constantly applied to manufacture of marine airbags to assure Evergreen marine airbags can always satisfy customers’ increasing demands.