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Student's design is the Cat's whiskers

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From left Haarvind Ram, Phiroze Contractor, Declan Evans, Lemuel Chin, Marcus Chong River Graauw worked in a team on a catamaran design.

Fourth year maritime engineering students presented their final year design projects last week at the Australian Maritime College.

The cohort worked in teams on a new design for a roll-on, roll-off Catamaran passenger (ROPAX) ferry and fuel barge infrastructure which has the potential to revolutionise the shipping industry by opening up the fuels of the future for the Zero Emission Vessel (ZEV) holy grail.

Teams of students worked on seven different design elements: hullform, general arrangement, structures, propulsion, powering, cargo-handling and motions coordinated through seven systems engineering management teams (communications, data control, marketing mission, planning risk and weights).

On Maritime Engineering Design Project Presentation Day the teams presented their design in twenty minute blocks to a judging panel using overhead projection and computer display.

Naval architecture student Chris Buchanan said the group had been tasked by Revolution Designs acting as a client with designing a 150m ROPAX catamaran and fuel barge infrastructure.

“It’s not a real life project that will be built but they are very similar designs which allows us first hand experience that you might not get from a design exercise from the Uni,” he said.

“I was part of the hullform team for the Cat and responsible for passing that design to other technical teams to do the stability analysis or motions analysis and do general arrangement drawings for the vessel as well.

Chris said the communication skills learned communicating with team mates and other teams on a specific project based learning activity would be critical when he entered the maritime industry.

“I was in the technical hullform team so taking what we had done and effectively communicating that to other technical teams in terms of the vessel’s resistance and giving that to the propulsion team or details of the size of the vessel or deck space and giving that to the general arrangement team- the communications skills will come in handy going into the industry,” he said.

The design and practical aspects of working on the design would set him up for going out and working in the industry.

He said the team’s design of propeller tunnels into the back of the hull allowed a better flow of water over the propeller.

Ocean engineering student Ben Seymour said his team worked on the general arrangement of the catamaran and his personal effort was into the design of a supplementary fuel barge.

“The vessel itself was a conceptual design for low emissions, the main component that I looked at was the fuel barge,” he said.

“The fuel barge was a very novel concept, it's something that doesn’t really exist, it was to supplement the vessel in places that don’t have LNG (liquefied natural gas).

“This vessel supported the ROPAX basically it was like a portable petrol station.”

Ben said the exercise had been valuable because he had learned about bringing the concepts of ship design together that he may not have learned in his course.

Ocean engineering student Thomas Fallon his team’s task had been to design a novel solution for refuelling a ferry that used alternative fuels.

“This is to accommodate zero emissions goals and targets going into the future,” he said.

He said the feedback and support from people in the audience had helped the presentation.

Use of AMC computer labs and engineering software had made it possible to develop a real concept solution.

He said that the project was a good example of applying the theoretical knowledge learned from teaching and applying it to a real world solution.

“Something that is marketable and scalable in the future,” Thomas said.

On Friday October 25 the teams presented their research projects at the Swanson Building at the AMC's Newnham campus.

Published on: 23 Oct 2019