Turkish shipyard delivers first two Hidrovia push boats

Written by Nick Blenkey
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FEBRUARY 26, 2014 — Turkey’s Uzmar Shipyard has delivered the first two in a series of eight advanced diesel electric shallow draft river push boats to Brazil’s Hidrovias do Brasil S.A.

The push boats will operate on the Parana River, South America under a long term iron ore barge transportation contract with Vale. Their design has been customized to meet Hidrovia do Brasil’s operational requirements for range, crash stopping distance, speed, maneuverability and ability to burn HFO.

Designed by Robert Allan and optimized in the Vienna Model Basin, the boats each have three Z-drives and will push 16-barge flotillas of about 48,000 dwt each on an extremely circuitous 2,500 km Parana River route.

Measuring 45.6 m LOA, with a beam of 16.5 m, the boats have a maximum draft of 2.5 m fully loaded.

Each is powered by three Wärtsilä 9L20 diesel HFO generators each developing 1,800 kW at 1,000 rev/min. This power is transmitted to AC direct controlled asynchronous electric motors for variable propulsion by three Schottel SRP 1215 FP propellers of 2.150 mm diameter.

The diesel electric propulsion system is supplied by Wärtsilä and ABB, integrated by ELKON (a subsidy of IMTECH). This arrangement provides a bollard of 69 tons ahead and 63 tons astern and a free running speed of 13.2 knots.

Thanks to UZMAR’s advanced engineering and building process the design lightweight target has been achieved with a 97% accuracy.

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