ShipBuilding Industry 2019 Issue 3

Page 36

qhse The lifeboat can carry up to 32 passengers with a weight of 100kg each.

First new lifeboat will be deployed on the AkerBP offshore platform in Norway.

with a nine-year battery capacity warranty. He continues, “But there is also the aspect that electric propulsion is much more environmentally friendly and reduces the human footprint.”

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Lifeboat.indd 34

Added Comfort

The lifeboat is capable of carrying 32 passengers with an individual weight of 100kg, which is more than the SOLASstandard of 82.5kg. Mr Verhoef explains,

“Research has shown that the average weight of a worker on an offshore platform is 99kg, and therefore DNV has pushed this number up to 100kg with a maximum of 150kg. The same goes for a person’s height requirements, which range from 1.50m to 2.10m tall. That is why we designed aluminium seats for our FL50-NS with a sliding headrest, onto which the newly developed five-point harness is attached. This way the seat can always be adjusted to the passenger, guaranteeing maximum safety during the launch.” In order to test Verhoef’s new seat design, they contacted TNO. “TNO is the only place in the world where you can test this kind of seat and, besides this, you identify yourself with a world-renowned research institute. We first conducted tests at MARIN, after which Norwegian research institute Marintek performed computer simulations of freefall lifeboat drops, from which representative boat accelerations were computed. TNO then used this data for their own tests on our seats. They were tested with dummies with a weight of up to 150kg. Based on this, TNO developed a computer model that can simulate a set of situations and create an occupant safety analysis, from which we can extract information which can be used to enhance the seats. The DNVstandard is a step forward towards

s h i p b u i l d i n g -i n d u s tr y. e u

07-06-19 09:44


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