Jay Clemens
Bechtel has collaborated with industry partners to develop a software program in order to build up port safety measures following research into the impact of passing ships on moored vessels.
Marco Pluijm, Bechtel’s ports sector manager and chairman of the Research on the Passing Effects on Ships project, said Monday the research determined that the effect of wash from a passing ship is “serious.”
Pluijm added that the wash could “compromise safety, cause environmental damage and result in financial loss.â€
“Based on a comprehensive set of experimental, computational and full-scale data, we have developed valuable, user-friendly software to help mitigate these effects, and created guidance for the planning and design of new ports,†he said.
Researchers found that the forces from the wash correlate with the port basin’s shape, the ship’s size, the passing distance and the vessel’s speed.
