Spain: Siport21 Presents Four Projects

This year, during the celebration of the 12th Spanish Coast and Port Engineering Congress, Siport21 presented four projects which sum up part of their daily technical activity.

Two of them were carried out for mexican ports: the Manoeuvrability Study of Port of Altamira and Ship Manoeuvring Study of LNG Carriers at Port of Manzanillo. The other were Risk Analysis of Access Manoeuvres in Pasajes Port (Spain) and Operability of Exposed Terminals.

In the case of Manoeuvrability Study of Port of Altamira, an international tender, the company carried out a complete analysis of the different manoeuvres at the Port, considering the actual situation and the future extension, in order to improve the capacity of the Port by increasing the navigation areas in the Access Channel and establishing the navigation limits inside the Port.

The simulation study analyzed the meeting head-on manoeuvres of the vessels in navigation in the External Channel and the interaction between sailing ships and moored ships, in order to certify the designed area navigation inside the Port, to optimize the maritime traffic and to avoid interferences on moored vessels operation.

In the Port of Manzanillo (Colima, Mexico), immediately before the New LNG Terminal entered service the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE) of Mexico and Grupo TMM requested Siport21 to carry out a Real-Time Ship Manoeuvring Simulation Study in order to analyze the access conditions of the LNG Carriers at the new Terminal. This type of study is aimed at defining the manoeuvring strategy and operational limits supported by the best experience of Terminal Operators, Tug Masters, Ship-owners and Pilots, as well as training them in the new port.

The third project involved the evaluation of risk in access manoeuvres of car-carriers at the Port of Pasajes. The objective was to decide on the exemption of tug assistance for specific UECC ships. Several emergency situations were analyzed using the Real-time Ship Bridge Simulator, as a basis for a Quantitative Risk Assessment. Individual and Social Risk indices were compared with and without the use of tugs. The final decision was that these vessels are exempt from the general rule because of their high manoeuvrability, good maintenance and expert pilotage in all manoeuvres.

The last study was related to Exposed Terminals, characteristic of Chilean and Peruvian pacific coast. These are built in non sheltered locations or in barely sheltered ports, so they are fully exposed to the action of the waves. Their downtime (operability) is a critical factor at the operation stage, but it can be assessed from the beginning of the design stage, using numerical models. Siport21 has a wide experience on moored vessels behaviour studies whose aim is to define and verify the mooring configuration for a ship in different load conditions under operational and survival conditions.

[mappress]

Press Release, May 8, 2013