- It’s no secret that ships are costly vessels to keep afloat. With the average lifespan of a ferry or tugboat engine being around 25 years, they need regular services and often at least one major overhaul to stay in operation.
- Depending on the circumstances, some overhauls require the vessels to have their hulls cut open to retrieve the engines, quickly becoming an expensive procedure with a loss of revenue due to weeks of downtime.
- Until now, the service life of an engine has been determined by how long it can last assuming it’s being used to capacity, all the time. But new data, gathered and analysed by the Rolls-Royce Service Engineering team, has shown that most engines are rarely pushed to their limits. As a result, overall service life could be extended by a significant margin.
Longer lifecycles
By analysing vast amounts of data in a two-year project, we’ve been able to understand the service lives of our commercial shipping engines with even greater precision.
The team used an elaborate algorithm to sift through a mountain of ‘big data’ and collate over 50,000 records containing information on the differing load profiles of engines in the field.
The outcome is that the time between overhauls (TBO) can now be significantly extended and, in some cases, doubled. In fact, with some of our mtu Series 4000 marine engines, a major overhaul can now be avoided completely, saving money, time and resources – as well as cutting carbon emissions through the transport of replacement components.
“Our Service Engineering team, led by Jens Schneemann, has calculated the wear and tear on engines much more specifically based on individual usage profiles, examining which engine components are worn and in what way,” explains Andreas Müller-Hirlinger, Sr. Sales Manager Tug & Workboat Rolls-Royce Power Systems MTU. “Using this information, we’ve been able to make much more accurate predictions about how much longer the engine can ultimately run for, and when what maintenance is due.”
Enabling a smoother service schedule
The Service Engineering team managed to pinpoint the individual engine components that determine the TBO and has been able to set the service lives of these two components at up to 90,000 hours.
It’s also allowed the team to adjust the maintenance schedule for the engines accordingly, re-jigging it to allow as many components as possible to be serviced at the same time, achieving yet another cut in TBO.
Positive results for customers
For the customer, raising the TBO creates a massive cost saving. Not only through the elimination of a major overhaul. But also by also minimising the organisational and cost inputs, meaning less – potentially zero – downtime for the vessel operator.
“For us as shipowners, it’s important to know the total cost of ownership of our engines in fairly precise terms,” said Lars Peter Mortensen, Technical Manager of Danish tugboat company Svitzer. “It looks like the extended TBO is going to cut expected maintenance and associated cost by a significant margin, with some major work not needing to be scheduled during the life of our fleet given our low annual operating hours and engine loads.”
He added that when it comes to ordering new vessels and supplying engines, the TBO profile of engine manufacturers certainly has an impact on decision-making. “With a longer anticipated TBO – and accompanying reduction in the total cost of ownership – Rolls Royce Power Systems becomes a more attractive proposition for future orders.”
