Bjørn-Morten Batalden1, Peter Wide1*
1 The institute of Engineering and Safety, The Arctic University of Norway, Tromsø, Norway
* Speaker, e-mail: peter.wide@uit.no
The need for a lifeboat that operates in open water, ice and icy waters
Evacuation from ships and fixed installations in maritime operations is a challenging process, especially in severe weather conditions e.g. in cold climate. SOLAS regulations and the Polar code recommends a number of actions related to the evacuation process including a survival for a period of five days in a lifeboat. Today’s evacuation systems are not able to fulfill the requirements. This unambiguous safety shortage between regulatory rules and functional abilities creates an uncertainty in risk assessments during an evacuation process. Therefore, it is of importance to bridge the gap and design lifeboats that fulfill the SOLAS regulations and Polar code. The maritime operations in cold climate requires have certain needs for a new approach to design new and innovative solutions in order to establish a safe evacuation process, from launching to seal level and all the way to being saved and located on a ship or on-land. The evacuation equipment’s has traditionally been using proven technology, simple solutions and low-cost alternative where performance is not a prioritized area (a solution that hopefully never be used)
The development of lifeboats have since mid-1850 been traditionally developed. The propulsion has been developed from sail and rowing to a movable system with a motor. However, when covering the rescue boat as windshield for the evacuees, then the risk assessment did increase, as the lack of performance requirements for ventilation created new risks. For example, the risk of CO2 accumulation, not optimal thermal protection or dehydration may be increased significantly. On the other hand, an action when opening the door in order to ventilate the evacuators’ area, will most likely then create a negative cooling process that can be shortening affect the temperature on-board the lifeboat.
The SAREX test expeditions, which were carried out north of Svalbard, in April 2016 and May 2017, indicated severe shortcomings in the evacuation equipment design and operating performance. Therefore, this paper will proposed a concept study to design an operating ability that manage to operate in severe weather conditions e.g. ice, ice sludge and water with no ice.
The development of today’s solutions and functions in lifeboat performance has not been using the latest technologies, e.g. the existing knowledge from for example the car or aviation industry. The lack of successful evacuation in cold climate, where e.g. ice or icing, fog, polar-lows often is present, is in today’s rescue boat solutions a challenging task. In ice-covered water, ice sludge or waters with no ice, there is a need to design lifeboats that are able to manage all these kind of environment challenges in connection with with cold climate, fog, big waves, intense snowfall ice, ice floes or even polar bears. Also ice ridges or floating ice can result in hazardous conditions, that has to be coped with in high north activities in ship traffic or other onshore operations.
A new concept
A new newly adopted certification for ships entering into the Arctic waters and/or Antarctica is from 1 January 2017 in operation, that will fulfil the minimum requirements from IMO Polar code. However, the certificate will not guarantee a safe evacuation process. The Rescue ball concept is designed to provide a more efficient functionality and to handle many of the shortcoming in the design of today’s lifeboats. The expected result is then expected to perform a safer evacuation functionality and a thorough risk assessment.
A detailed presentation of the design will show the advantage of managing evacuation in cold climate operations in a safe manner, where the evacuated persons will be able to perform a dry evacuation. This means that the persons will not come in contact with water and as well as avoid a direct connection with the harsh environment outside the rescue unit. As for example, in today’s rescue operations in hash weather conditions, the only way of being evacuated from a rescue boat or draft by a helicopter is to enter the water before being lifted up. In wet evacuation, studies show that the energy loss in water at sea is 25 times faster than air (ref SARINOR) and the survival time is then reduced considerably. In dry and semi-dry (life boat / life raft) evacuation will increases the expected survival time and right rescue equipment characteristics for survival support will be crucial.
Therefore, a new design direction will be an important task to introduce dry evacuation procedures, in order to improve the survival conditions up to five days. This survival performance also include an efficient ventilation system and a smart energy consumption.
Conclusions
Today’s lifeboats and raft are not working according to what is expected in national and international standards and regulations. There is a need for new types of lifeboats that are able to work cold climate, where condition like in open waters, compact ice, as well as in ice sludge are present. Although new rules to secure a minimum standard has been performed, to certificate ships that will operate in Arctic/Antarctic waters. However, according to this minimum standard in the Polar code, there is no demands to have an evacuation system that operates in cold climate to manage ice, or ice sludge for up to 5 days.
References
[1] https://www.vgtv.no/video/113080/doedskampen-i-barentshavet (17.01.2018)
[2] SARex report no. 58, 2016, SARex Spitzbergen, Search and rescue exercise conducted of north spitzbergen exercise report, ISBN 978-82-7644-677-7, University of Stavanger.
[3] SARex report no. 69, 2017, SARex, Surviving a maritime incident in cold climate conditions, ISBN 978-82-7644-747-7, University of Stavanger.
[4] SARiNOR, 2016, SARINOR WP 4 og 5 Redning og overlevelse i kaldt klima obtained from: www.sarinor.no/?dfi=SARiNOR_WP4__5_Komplett_rapport_FINAL_rev_0.pdf (13.12.2017) [5] IMO Polar Code, 2016, Polar Code; International code for ships operating in Polar waters, 2016
electronic edition, ISBN 978-92-801-1628-1.
[6] IMO SOLAS chapter III, 2017 obtained from
https://www.iomshipregistry.com/media/1574/merchant-shipping-solas-chapter-iii-life-savingappliances-and-arrangements-regulations-2017.pdf (14.12.2017)
[7] IMO “Life-saving appliance”, 2017, Life-Saving Appliances (Including LSA Code) by the International Maritime Organization, ISBN 978-92-801-1654-0, 2017 electronic edition.