Engine Explosion

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Big Pete
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Engine Explosion

Post by Big Pete »

Interesting story of poor maintenance on a Ro Ro ferry leading to the top end of the main Engine connecting rod failing, and major damage to the engine and fire in the Machinery spaces.

http://think.imarest.org/q/1HwT0EgdJt6xMX6Q5AJpF/wv

Follow the makers Manual!!
It is always better to ask a stupid question than to do a stupid thing.
Atlantic
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Re: Engine Explosion

Post by Atlantic »

Interesting article, short turnaround ? use of the cheapest contractor? no time for crew to overseeing the work?

I also find that most maintenance system follows the location not the part. For example piston cylinder #1 but if you take that piston out put an overhauled piston in what’s the history of that part?

Must have been terrible for the third engineer, know your escape route. We all struggled with safety chains going up a ladder, terrible system.
popeye62
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Re: Engine Explosion

Post by popeye62 »

I know these engines well as I was on a ship that four of them although they were 14V's, they are tough, high powered and scream like banshee's at 85%...in a nice way. Although 'human erroneous action' or f**king up is the number one cause of engine damage, this case is rare and definitely not us because this is what we do and we have been to college to understand notch resistance, stress raisers, hoop and thermal stress or at the very least to RTFM! I have sailed on a few Ro-Ro's and maintenance is difficult, you may get the occasional overnighter or a Sunday but there is rarely ever enough time to pull a unit and you can't do it at sea as there is a lack of redundancy. She is old and sounds to be hard working - 110K hours from 140K total is an average duty cycle of 80% over 20 years. Possibly better planning of re-fit with enhanced condition monitoring could coincide with the intermediate survey. 2.5 years at 80% DC is approx. 17,000 hours. This is very general and I am sure this has been considered. DFDS know what they are doing and I have met a couple of supers on a couple of their ships. You have to feel for the engineers and the company as they had a spare set ready to go and believed that they could be relied upon and it nearly killed one of us. I would not expect DFDS to check their contractor for something as basic as following the builder's instructions it is an internal responsibility and so is quality. It is not the service they paid for regardless of the cost.
Pistons can find themselves in all locations because when we overhaul a piston crown it is fully calibrated, cleaned and pressure tested. If it is all within limits we look at the trend of wear and extrapolate that to the next 12,000 hour overhaul and determine if those limits will be exceed, if they do it is scrapped (or reconditioned) but it doesn't go back in. If it does we can legitimately set the counter to 0 hours but only for that component and only for the purposes of time between overhauls, there is still the expected life of 80,000 hours to consider to to fatigue, creep etc. The planned maintenance system is an engineers best friend when it is comprehensively used over the lifetime of the machinery.
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