Modern Shipbuilding

Abdullahel Bari, B A, B Sc Engr. Ph D, C Eng, FIEB, FRINA.

Chairman, Ananda Group;
President, Association of Export Oriented Shipbuilding Industries of Bangladesh (AEOSIB)

Introduction
Hominids' movements on the sea in 770,000 BC, carries of men and goods in 50,000 BC and in
5,000 BC respectively and Horupan mud dock in 2,500 BC are known in the history. Logs and
dugout logs fastened or rigged is the starting of all. Thus modern Shipbuilding are the
manufacture of Chinese floating fortresses in 722 BC, trireme battle ships in 524 BC and 180 ft
long merchant ship in 31 BC. Christopher Columbus's crossing the Atlantic in 1492, Vasco da
Gama's reaching America in 1498 and the manufacture of invincible Armada are records of
modern shipbuilding. Building of a submarine in 1620, ships used in Trafalgar battle in 1805, a
aircraft carrier in 1918 are very recent story used of elevated shipbuilding technology. These
days shipbuilding i.e, ship design is mostly computer aided, interfaced production oriented and
ship construction is in modular form. Sub-assemblies are produced from prefabricated
components and assembled to blocks. Blocks are fitted out completely, cut to measure, moved to
the building berth, assembled into a complete hull, assigned a name and slipped or floated in
water. It is presently aiming to soon use materials to be evolved and methodology to be
rewarded by nano technology as well as to utilise Industry-4 Management Techniques, thereby
to present mankind an efficient unman environment friendly sustainable smart craft.

2.0 A synthesised engineering process

Shipbuilding encompasses developing a design of a ship, a floating body or a marine structure
based on a given concept and a mission along with a set of requirements and turning the same
into a reality through a process of construction and assembling, ensuring the highest attainable
quality as well as providing follow up maintenance, repair and rehabilitation services during
operations, and handling its disposal at the end of the operational life. It is an engineering
process consisting of using mathematical, analytical, empirical tools and available data as
references to present an object in data form, and manufacturing and assembling many hundred
pieces of finished and semi-finished own products and of other industries as raw materials to
produce the object in reality. A shipbuilding undertaking is usually termed as a shipyard and it
may be as large as an industry like China Shipbuilding Industry Corporation, China or
Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Japan with annual revenue as large as USD 42 billion and USD 36
billion respectively. These shipyards have order books for construction and delivery of many
numbers of complicated ships year to year. On the other hand, a ship design house may be a
single man consulting studio or a large company like Zaliv Ship Design, the designer of the
largest cruise liner or ICE, the European largest independent design group.

2.1 Ship Design

Strength to sustain the forces in the hostile sea, stability to float and speed to reach the
destination in time using minimum fuel are still the basis of design of a ship adopting, however,
a wheel, offered in 1957 of iterative evaluations for choosing improved parameters towards
attaining an acceptable solution, the starting point being a reference sister ship. Quite a many
desired objectives and goals call for review and optimization, such as, commercial requirements,
market scenario, system and fuel for propulsion, span and operational life cycle costs, affordable
automation, human factors, minimum harmful emissions and old ship disposal cost, in addition
to sea keeping characteristics, other engineering parameters and naval architectural aesthetic
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aspects. Further, a set of constraints, such as, impacts of ports, restrictions on routes,
requirements of rules & regulations of class, flag state, port state & IMO circumvents the design
decision space. An optimum solution which is obtained through these iterations, termed as point-
to-point design, is not unquestionable as other alternative solutions in the design decision space
remain unexplored and in practice it is often found that better solutions than the decided
optimum exist. Towards attaining a better design, each member of a chosen set of options in the
design decision space are step by step evaluated towards selecting the acceptable solution. The
approach, which is termed as design decision space approach, offers a few distinct advantages
over the point-to-point design approach, however, a question remains that other set of members
are left out of consideration. There are other approaches of ship design, such as, the Design
Bounding Approach, etc. of which, over the last couple of decades, Production Oriented Design
Approach is gaining ground which once has offered the Developable Surface of, say, a bulbous
bow in larger ships or Developable Hull of smaller vessels like tugboats. That a ship, the most
complex product so far produced by human and that a naval architect, 'a jack of most of the
engineering disciplines but master of none' who integrates and harmonises the design process, a
Systems Engineering Approach is also followed although there is a distinct difference between
the design and engineering. 3-D design model with ,, to reach a preliminary design and may help
to arrive quickly at a contract design. Ship design is still a combination of philosophy,
engineering and art. Design, with increasing complexity of ships as well the power of
computers, not only has come out of the secret skills and expertise of a shipwright but exceeded
an individual's capability, only to be rightfully handled by a team having multidisciplinary
knowledge and skills, and been entirely based on computation using algorithms and software.
Basics of design of stationary marine structures differ, however, are left out here for space
constraint.
Apart from optimization of principal parameters including coefficients against a set of
requirements and arriving at a general plan satisfying rules, regulations and the owner, a ship
design process embarks on three distinct features i.e, hydrodynamical, structural and system
design.

2.1.1 Hydrodynamics
Hydrodynamical engineering deals with hull form, stability, floodable length & damage
stability, speed, maneuverability & motions in general. Behaviours of a ship having a weight
distribution and surface area exposures in the water in the open air greatly depend on the hull
form and superstructure. The lines plan which needs special attention and designer's deep
knowledge to be developed and feared dictates the general plan and therefore the load
distributions to attain the desired LCG, matching LCB for trim, displacement, cargo & tank
spaces, minimum possible power requirement, sea keeping, maneuverability, production
friendliness and along with superstructure aesthetic. Coefficients and dimensional ratios have
significant contributions in ships' hydrodynamical performance and therefore must be carefully
evaluated and rationally optimally chosen. Design of the ship's bow and the stern need further
special attention. Appropriate entrance reduces resistances and providing a bulbous bow may
result in resistance reduction up to 10%. A bulbous bow has positive influence on pitching and
negative effect on slamming. A good stern provides adequate clearance in between the hull and
the propeller to avoid propeller excited vibration, improves water flow to the rudder for better
steering and course stability, allows stream line flow to the propeller for better propeller
efficiency still leaving the required space for the steering gear etc. above in hull.

2.1.2 Structures
Structural engineering handles strength of ships starting with the scantlings for the required
longitudinal hull section modulus, load distribution, concentrated loads, continuity and rigidity
of structures to withstand forces in the sea and to counter hogging, sagging, racking, and to
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withhold fracture, yielding, buckling, fatigue and other failures as well as to ensure minimum
use of materials and construction convenience. Classification societies prescribed scantlings are
used in most of the cases if the ship is not innovative to the extent of non applicable class
provided structural design parameters. In such cases standard engineering design method is
applied i.e, allowable stresses or working stresses base deterministic design method with safety
factors is commonly used in structural design. Only recently with the avant of enormously
powerful computer, reliability-based loads and resistances approach is being followed.

2.1.3 Systems
A ship usually has components, some of which may comprise a system. Components of a system
are complementary to each other and together meet a common goal. System design provides
details of systems, such as, of propulsion, power generation & distribution, installation of
machinery, mooring & deck fittings, insulation & finishing, ventilation & HVAC system,
positioning navigational aids & equipment, capacity positioning of LSA & FFA, cargo handling
gears, bilge-ballast, gas, air, water, liquid etc. including BOQ, material specifications and
quantity, testing plans etc..

2.2 Ship construction

Ship construction comprises interdependent activities requiring parallel executions needing
varying times and, strict control of inventory, however, ensuring availability of a component on
a defined space-time frame. It assembles 2,500,000 independent items in building a modern
aircraft carrier. Features, such as, material acquisition, allocation, nesting, cutting, joining,
assembling, out fittings, protection, launching, inclining tests, trials and delivery are common in
the construction process irrespective of types of craft, construction materials, available yard
facilities and delivery time. It emphasizes, among others, on the quality; quality ensured by the
builder, the owner and the engaged classification society, a quality ensuring non profiting
organization of unquestionable integrity; the convenience of production using available
facilities, especially the system of launching; the scope for using the art of the day technology;
and the competing total delivery cost. The way to the delivery starting from the concept is quite
long but a major part of the process of both design and construction is follow up engineers' and
artisans' works. These days the production process of a shipyard is often simulated to identify
gaps for improvements of available facilities.

2. 2.1 Construction Materials

Timbers, graded steels, aluminum, fiber glass, fiber reinforced plastic, concrete and other
composites are used for shipbuilding. Use of materials, to be improved in properties applying
improved annealing to obtain desired lattice structure and nanotechnology, in shipbuilding, is a
near future possibility. Timbers had been exclusively used up to the end of 1850 century for
shipbuilding before they to some extent exhausted supply supply sources and resulted in
excessive weight with increasing length of ships leaving lesser stowage areas and were gradually
replaced by iron and steel, and in case of smaller boats by composites. Use of timbers in mine
sweeper for their non-magnetic property is continuing until now. Joining is universal in ship
construction. Quality use of various types of joints in timbers, reverting in iron and welding in
steels and aluminum is the back bone of strength, water tightness and smooth finish of a ship.
Steel and grated steel are in use in more than 90% of global tonnage. Therefore, only a further
little details of steel construction are included.

2.2.2 Steel Construction

In case of steel shipbuilding, immediately after preliminary surface preparation and priming,
cutting starts in the construction process following nesting. It is often necessary to trim

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purchased plates to parallel edges. Plates are cut to shaped sizes, numbered and dispatched for
fabrication. Gas cutting using oxyacetylene is mostly used. For higher thickness and for speed,
laser-arc cutting is applied. Laser cutting with concentrated laser beam is gaining popularity in
modern mechanized robotic shipbuilding. Water jet of high pressure and speed is a environment
friendly cutting method. Only during and after World war - II, welding, a fusion process, got
widely spread in use in shipbuilding. According to the method and source of generating heat
required for the fusion, welding processes are named as gas, arc, laser and resistance welding.
There are quite a few types of arc welding of which AC consumable electrode process being the
most commonly used one. Electro-slag welding, Electric-gas welding, Thermite welding and
Friction stir welding are a few other types in use. Continuity and rigidity of structural members
as well as no deflection, deformation or twist in the hull are mandatory to be achieved with
minimum possible acceptable deviations. Proper sequence, appropriate welding materials &
equipment, experienced hands & regular testing and supervision help attaining quality
construction. Surface preparation and proper sequential application of paints are important
elements in a good shipbuilding practice. Mill scale, a protection of steel materials provided
during production against expected corrosion in storage and transportation, is thoroughly
removed to get to bare steel by blasting plate surfaces by sand, iron balls, copper chips or water.
In the past brine baths were used to make removal of mill scale easier to manual methods of
surface preparation. The dust or water on the plate is cleaned by dry air and a primer is applied
for protection during further processing. A completed and finished block is taken to a closed
chamber, blasted again to bare steel and painted according to PSPC scheme. The block gets
ready for out fitting. Completed blocks are assembled into a ship hull, welded and finished
painted. After launching or floating out it is placed in an out fitting basin or to a berth for
erection of deck houses, installation of machinery and equipment, fitting and finishing. The
finished ship goes under dock trials and inclining test. After successful sea trials, adjustments
and signing delivery/ acceptance protocol, the ship is delivered.

2.2.3 Minimising the Building Cost

A shipyard uses all known means to minimize the total cost up to the point of delivery including
provisions for warranty services without harming the quality, the human and the environment.
The most important of all for lessening cost is minimizing time, thereby reducing cost of money,
bonds, guarantees, inventory, direct manpower cost, manpower and yard overhead. Accelerating
delivery sometimes creates the scope for getting bonuses. Avoiding reworks, accidents, re-
docking and repeated sea trials help to reduce time and cost. The learning process abates costing
of a series of manufacture simultaneously or in line. 3-D integrated modelling of a ship
including out fittings makes physical modeling of a complicated system redundant as well as
manufacturing better visualised at various stages of construction.

2.2.4 Construction in a Large Modern Shipyard

The construction of Liberty ships demonstrated the advantages of adopting "production line"
manufacturing resulting in a delivery of a ship in three days during World War II. Efforts and
desire of economizing construction led to the application of integrated interfaced manufacturing
using common database, covering the process from a concept to a delivery, i.e, in practice taking
completely painted outfitted accurately dimensioned blocks, constructed according to computer
aided detail production drawings and a programmed space-time frame, are moved to the building
berth in modern large shipyards. Again originated in the U.S, the principles of Lean, which
stresses the efficient use of resources and elimination of wastage, among others, is being
followed in ship construction these days. This automating robotic shipbuilding using Artificial
Intelligence and Machine Learning facilities reduces 40% time in building a ship. In turn it is
advancing shipbuilding to serve the mankind better.

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Presently, shipbuilding has criticisms, even a few, of its production process and vehement
arguments against menace of its services, shipping. Shipping and therefore shipbuilding are to
take care of those criticisms in the future.

3.1 Environment Friendly Ships

Solar and wind power devices together when improved in design for better absorption, and
simulated & programmed for the best positions with respect to the sun and the wind may
provide more propulsive power and make ship free from criticisms of air pollution and pollution
of the ocean with wastes from fossil fuel. Use of LNG fuel will drastically reduce emissions as
well as fuel cost. It reduces CO2 emissions up to 25% and NOX by 92% and SOX and
particulate matter are eliminated. The renowned engine manufactures are developing CNG fuel
useable engines. Hybrid propulsion will reduce the fuel cost by up to 20% and emissions
substantially. Integrated electric propulsion will reduce weight and noise. Hydrogen generated
by electrolysis from water, termed as green hydrogen, is expected to be in commercial use by
2030 to power ships without any polluting emission. Methanol and Ethanol may also be
evaluated as alternative sources. Use of FOS (Fuel Optimisation System) will further help to
control as well as to know the amount of fuel consumption. Ballast free ship, a concept which,
however, needs further investigation may waive non native biological contaminations. The
injury of sea mammals is an issue to be resolved as soon as possible. Using sensors to identify
approaching mammals, diverting course and steaming at a very slow speed may help avoiding
mammals' injuries. Use of materials offered by nano technology, such as, Bucky papers or
composites will reduce weight substantially, free shipbuilding from surface preparation &
paintings. These may offer more environment friendly ships coming up in the future. Indeed
professionals, regulatory bodies as well as international community are looking forward to the
development of smart unman digital Ships in the near future.

3.2 Technology Based Shipbuilding

Shipbuilding is now progressively becoming more knowledge based and therefore, capital
intensive . The huge memory and processing ability of computers facilitates shipbuilding to
frame 3-D models of integrated interfacing elements of ship design and production on a
common data base. 3-D printing will be in commercial use and help framing help making real
life three dimensional objects real by 3-D printing of virtual object. This may be termed as 4
industrial revolution. The technology is already in use in precision costly equipment
manufacturing. It is expected that by 2030 it will be commercially affordable to use in
shipbuilding. Design time will be shortened and it may be possible to complete in an individual's
studio. Automated robotic construction, 3rd generation industrial revolution, are in ship
production for quite sometime now. However every now and then improvement and flexibility
are being added resulting in robotic interfacing with human interference. Apart from repetitive
jobs like welding in panel shops, these are used in surface preparation and paintings releasing
the human from hazardous jobs. Better quality is achieved. Up to now we use to make a model
or a dice by taking a bigger size sample, wastage of materials and man hours can not be avoided.
Laser Cladding is these days being used. Wastage of materials and man hours are avoided.
However, the method is not environment friendly. Improvement is necessary before wide
industrial use of lager cladding. Cyber security has been recently a crying issue on account of
measure of crew, ransom and dislocation in transportation system. Smart ship solution proving
real life data may be a solution. However, the lack of cybersecurity of transmitted data may
create havoc. Ships these days are being fitted with electronic gazettes and real time data are
collected, processed on board or pass on to ashore continuously. A new horizon of opening
electronic map has opened which helps select the best possible route for a voyage avoiding gale,
high waves, under current offering much shorter journey time along with all benefits ,such as,
lower fuel cost, less emissions, more time for commercial activities. These days about 21
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different electronic navigational equipment are being used in most of the ships. Therefore, in a
way navigation is no more that much hazardous. Fitted equipment may even schedule
maintenance of major equipment on board and thereby a better over all efficiency may be
achieved. Ships behaviour are analysed exhaustively because data are available. As a result
reasons of accidents may be waived. Savings of fuel is a gain for all mankind in terms of less
depletion of a fixed reserved natural resource.

Modern Shipbuilding using the huge data pool creates a space-time frame of each and every
details of the building process and availability of construction elements and thereby makes
construction much faster. Furthermore, the workers working in the progressive construction may
be visualised, programmed optimally to attain maximum output per man-hour avoiding reworks,
hidden defects & delays. Production design will be irrelevant without only referring to for
occasional checks. Thus the tremendous increase in production rates will reduce time costs and
cost of overheads. Emissions from welding may be minimised and dust and fume contamination
may be avoided by improving systems without much difficulty. Slipping compound
contamination may be completely eradicated. Cabling may be eliminated using Control Area
Network (CAN) integrated Electronic Control Unit which may reduce material and manpower
costs. Ship sizes may increase to utilise economies of scale further. Delivered ships will be more
cost competitive and free from criticisms of GHG emissions to a great extent. Europe with
elevated knowledge and skills as well as with formidable supply chain manufacturers may
comeback in shipbuilding investing under leaderSHIP-2015 programme in shipyards using ultra
modern technologies. China is already looking at implementing 5G technologies in
Shipbuilding. Competing edges of lower labour cost may not be any more significant.

Author's Biography:
Dr Abdullahel Bari is a Bachelor of Arts, University of Rajshahi; B.Sc. Engg. (Naval
Arch. & Marine Engg.), Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology
(BUET), Dhaka; Ph.D (Shipbuilding), University of New Castle-upon-Tyne, U.K;
professionally trained in Intermediate Technology, UNDP, in “Production Planning
& Control” IBA, University of Dhaka; on Classification of ships, Board of Trade,
U.K; Model Testing of ships & propellers, University of Delft & NSMB, the
Netherlands; experienced as a Naval Architect, Bangladesh Inland Water Transport
Authority (BIWTA), Dhaka; a Ship Surveyor, Govt. of Bangladesh; the Chief
Engineer (Construction & Planning), Bangladesh Water Transport Corporation (BIWTC), Dhaka; an
Assist. Professor, BUET, Dhaka; a Fellow of the Institution of Engineers, Bangladesh (FIEB); a Fellow
of the Royal Institution of Naval Architects, U.K (FRINA); a Chartered Eng, the Engineering Council,
U.K; a Council Member, the Royal Institution of Naval Architects, U.K.; the Chairman, the Royal
Institution of Naval Architects, Bangladesh Chapter; the President, Association of Export Oriented
shipbuilding Industries of Bangladesh; Chairman, Ananda Group of Companies & industries, Dhaka,
Bangladesh.

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