Ad Hoc Panels

Completed Ad Hoc Panels

Previous revision: April 12, 2004 (Posted photo of L/L group)
September 27, 2000 (re-organized pages)
March 27, 2000 (Ad Hoc panel updates)

Completed Ad Hoc Panel Projects

Ro-Ro Passenger Ferry Safety (Ad Hoc #1)

References:

"Ro-Ro Passenger Ferry Safety: An Issue Addressed by SNAME," Marine Technology, October 1997.

"The Final Report of the SNAME Ad Hoc Panel on Ro-Ro Ferry Safety," The SNAME Ad Hoc Panel on Ro-Ro Ferry Safety, SNAME Transactions, pp. 421-434, Vol. 104, 1996.

Hutchison, B. L., Molyneux, D., and Little, P., "Time Domain Simulation and Probability Domain Integrals for Water on Deck Accumulation," CyberNautics 95, SNAME California Joint Sections Meeting, held aboard the RMS Queen Mary at Long Beach, California, 21-22 April 1995.

Hutchison, B.L., Little, P., Molyneux, D., Noble, P.G., and Tagg, R.D., "Safety Initiatives from the SNAME Ad Hoc Ro-Ro Safety Panel," RO RO 96 Conference, Lübeck, Germany, 21-23 May 1996.

Little, P.E. and Hutchison, B. L., "Ro-Ro Safety After the Estonia - A Report on the Activities of the Ad Hoc Panel on Ro-Ro Safety," SNAME, Marine Technology, July 1995.

Related References:

Ross, Carl T.F., et al., "Damage Stabilty Characteristics of Model Ro-Ro Ferries," SNAME, Marine Technology, Winter 2000.

Pawlowski, Maciej, "Subdivision of Ro-Ro Ships for Enhanced Safety in the Damaged Condition," SNAME, Marine Technology, Fall 1999.

Svensen, Tor Egil and Dracos Vassalos, "Safety of Passenger/Ro-Ro Vessels: Lessons Learned from the North-West European R&D Project," SNAME, Marine Technology, October 1998.

Vassalos, Dracos, et al, "Dynamic Stability Assessment of Damaged Passenger/Ro-Ro Ships and Proposal of Rational Suvival Criteria," SNAME, Marine Technology, October 1997.

Ross, Carl T.F., et al., "Tests on Conventional and Novel Model Ro-Ro Ferries," SNAME, Marine Technology, October 1997.

Final Report on the MV Estonia - On December 3, 1997 the Joint Accident Investigation Commission of Estonia, Finland and Sweden delivered its Final Report on the Capsizing of the Ro-Ro Passenger Vessel Estonia. The 228-page report has been posted on the Internet at www.edita.fi/aib_finland/estoneng. The Estonia was sailing across the Baltic Sea through a storm on the evening of September 27/28, 1994. Around 1:00 a.m., a heavy wave impact started ripping the bow visor loose. It soon tore away, which pulled the vehicle ramp down and allowed seas to flood into the vehicle deck. The ferry capsized in less than 15 minutes and sank about 20 minutes later. Eight hundred-fifty two persons perished.

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Intact Stability of Tankers (Ad Hoc #2)

The (second) Ad Hoc Panel on Intact Stability of Tankers was formed in April 1995 to provide a technical evaluation of the lolling aspects of tankers. The panel’s task was to look into the effect that design parameters have on the intact stability of double hull tankers. The first paper referenced below focuses solely on technical issues. An addendum follows on page 182; it is titled "Considerations for Lolling Prevention" and was prepared to complete the panel’s work. A summary of the project and processes can be found in the T&R activities section of the July 1996 issue of Marine Technology.

IMO adopted (at the 40th session of the Marine Environmental Protection Committee in September 1997) regulations for intact stability criteria for new double hull tankers. These stability criteria are to be satisfied through design except for combination carriers (OBOs) where simple operating procedures may be allowed. These regulations (MARPOL 73/78, I/25A) will be applicable for new oil tankers where the building contract is placed on or after 1 February 1999.

References:

Moore, C., J. Neuman, and D. Pippenger, "Intact Stability of Double Hull Tankers," SNAME, Marine Technology, Vol. 33, No. 3, July 1996.

Goodwin, M.J., J.C. Card, and J.S. Spencer, "Study of Double Hull Tanker Lolling and Its Prevention," SNAME, Marine Technology, Vol. 33, No. 3, July 1996.

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Environmental Performance of Tankers (Ad Hoc #3)

The members of the Ad Hoc Panel produced a truly commendable, landmark paper on behalf of the Society. The outstanding response in Ottawa, and the Workshop has added to the value. All members should be proud to be a part of an organization that can effect such cooperation on sophisticated technical matters. LOOK HERE (Panel O-44 home page) and in the October or January 1999 issue of Marine Technology for the close out of this exciting project, including the significant discussions from the Annual Meeting, and the written discussions given at this Workshop, along with the authors' closure.

However, some outstanding issues were identified during the work of the Panel and also by many discussers to the report of the Panel. Accordingly, SNAME convened a workshop, hosted by the Marine Board of the National Academy of Sciences, at the Georgetown Facility in Washington, DC on January 15-16, 1998.

Forty-one people attended, representing tanker owners, builders, academics, designers, consultants, and staff from industry associations, naval architecture firms, classification societies, U.S. Congress, and government and regulatory bodies. The workshop was divided into three sessions. All the discussions were highly interactive, if not quite lively!

In the first session, Dragos Rauta of INTERTANKO discussed issues of HBL (hydrostatic balanced loading), with emphasis on practicable recommendations on the implementation of HBL. There has been some considerable discussion within the industry on interpretations of the IMO guidelines. The Workshop participants agreed to recommend to the U.S. and Canadian administrations proposals for uniform interpretations.

By far the most attention was focused on additional and very in-depth discussions (and debate) on assumptions and findings of the Ad Hoc Panel's report. This second session tackled: (a) probabilistic accidental oil outflow and associated structural arrangements (Prof. Alan Brown); (b) costs related to oil pollution associated with various sizes of oil spills from tankers (Wayne Willis and Frank Nicastro); and (c) existing oil outflow regulations for new tankers and new regulations for tank size and acceptable outflows currently under development at the IMO (Keith Michel).

In the third and final session of the workshop, the exciting climax to these debates was moderated by Prof. Hank Marcus, and demonstrated that this Society can serve as an effective forum for discussing diverse opinions on a controversial issue. It was the IMO Guidelines for ... Alternatives to Double Hulls; using the three parameters (the probability of zero outflow, mean outflow, and extreme outflow) and the pollution index that was debated. The debates mirrored those at MEPC.

References:

Sirkar, et al, "A framework for assessing the environmental performance of tankers in accidental groundings and collisions," SNAME Transactions, Vol. 105, 1997.

"Environmental Performance of Tankers - Concluding Remarks from Ad Hoc Panel #3," SNAME, Marine Technology, pg xiii, Summer 1999. (The paper is 604 Kb in size, and may take 6 to 10 minutes to download.)

Contact: jsirkar@comdt.uscg.mil

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Load Lines (Ad Hoc #4)

The Panel’s charge was to address the need for scientific and logical underpinnings of a new load lines convention, and in the process to bring the talents and interests of SNAME members to bear on this most widely ratified of international marine safety instruments. The main thrust of the Panel’s work was:

• To conceptually define the safety provisions of the Load Line Convention and identify its present weaknesses;
• To examine a first principles approach to safety performance and freeboard assignment;
• To propose a work program which identifies the pertinent research, technology, and data requirements for the first principles approach.

This Panel’s work has been for the most part concentrated on application of first principles methods to ship safety, both in the sense of a general framework for future design and analysis work and toward better understanding of problems currently facing the industry. William Buckley’s extensive research into characterizing severe weather wave spectra and defining operational and survivability limits for ships complemented Professor Douglas Faulkner’s work in the U.K. on the Derbyshire loss and bulker safety generally. This correspondence and information shared with the Coast Guard helped to enable the SLF Load Lines Working Group to substantially enhance the hatch cover strength requirements in the recently approved ICLL revisions.

Professor Willard Pierson contributed many papers and briefs on the theory, measurement, and research needs associated with extreme waves. Both David Sucharski and Bruce Hutchison addressed the complex and sometimes confounding safety provisions of the Load Line Convention, in the context of first principles methods and available analytical tools. The end result of the Panel’s work was significant progress toward a vision of a truly scientific method of assigning load lines, and recommendations for a substantial first principles research program to bring about realization of the vision. The Panel delivered its findings to the T&R Steering Committee in January 2000, in CD format.

References:

"Freeboard Assignment: Recommendations for a Rational Rule," Sucharski, September, 1992.

"First Principles Methodology Applied to Ship Loads and Motions," by W.H. Buckley, September 11, 1998.

"Report of the Working Group at SLF 42, Parts 1 and 2," April 1999.

"Rapid Failure, Rapid Sinking,", Brown, D., RINA Conf. on Design and Operation for Abnormal Conditions, Glasgow, 21-22 October 1997.

"Design for Abnormal Ocean Waves," Faulkner, D. and R. A. Williams, RINA Spring Meetings,1996.

"Critical Survival Conditions for Ship Design," Faulkner, D. and W.H. Buckley, RINA Conf. on Design and Operation for Abnormal Conditions, 21-22 October 1997.

"Ship Stability in Heavy Weather: The Real Situation and Models Thereof," Pierson, W.J., U.S. Coast Guard Vessel Stability Symposium, New London, Connecticut, March 1993.

"Matching Vehicle Characteristics to Seaway Environments," Buckley, W. H., Proceedings of ASNE Conference on High Performance Vehicles, 24-27 June 1992. (pp. O/A83-91).

"Stability Criteria: Development of a First Principles Methodology," Buckley, W. H., at the Fifth International Conference on Stability of Ships and Ocean Vehicles, November, 1994.

"Critical Capsizing Conditions in Survivability Seaways," Buckley, W. H., RINA Conference on Design and Operation for Abnormal Conditions, Glasgow, 21-22 October 1997.

"The Transverse Stability of a Ship in a Longitudinal Seaway," Paulling, J.R., SNAME Journal of Ship Research, March 1961.

"A First Principles Approach to Revision of Hatch Cover and Coaming Design Rules," Buckley, W. H., September 10, 1998, unpublished.

"On the Impact of Green Water Loading on Ship and Offshore Unit Design," Buchner, B., PRADS International Conference, Seoul, September, 1995.

"The International Load Line Convention: Crossroad to the Future," Alman, et al, Marine Technology, October, 1992.

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Fishing Vessel Operations and Safety (Ad Hoc #12)

This Ad Hoc Panel was formed in January of 2001 to address fishing vessel safety from a broad perspective including: basic issues affecting fishing vessel safety, vessel design, vessel construction, vessel operation, vessel maintenance, survey, safety training and awareness, voyage planning,  costing,  marine weather prediction, fishing regulation, and risk analysis and assessment. Ad Hoc #12 recruited numerous members from the world fishing vessel community. It generated several T&R Projects and prepared T&R Bulletin 4-24 and numerous papers given at many different conferences. It provided major support to the U.S. Coast Guard Marine Investigation Board investigating the sinking of the F/V Arctic Rose.

The panel was closed in 2005, with the creation of new Panel O-49 on Small Working Vessel Operations and Safety - Panel O-49 will address a broad perspective of basic issues affecting small working vessel operations and safety. These include stability letters and their effectiveness, stability training and awareness, effectiveness of marine weather prediction in voyage planning and operations, existing stability regulations, and the application of risk analysis and assessment to these issues. The new panel will continue to address the objectives of Ad Hoc #12. Panel O-49 will make use of working groups, or sub-panels, to focus on specialized problems of interest to the Panel's members. It will coordinate with SNAME Panels O-44, SD-3 and the Small Craft Panels SC 1-6 in developing long-range plans to deal with operational guidance for masters and crew of small working vessels. The F/V Intranet will become Panel O-49 Intranet.

As was the case with Ad Hoc #12, most of the work of the panel will be accomplished with web-based communications and Panel meetings during the SNAME annual meeting.

Objectives - The five objectives of the Ad Hoc Panel on "Fishing Vessel Operations and Safety," supported by several working groups, were to:

• Investigate the feasibility of establishing risk-based fishing vessel stability criteria appropriate to the type of vessel and its operating area.
• Evaluate the effectiveness of existing stability letters based on the IMO 1993 Torremolinos Protocol for vessels longer than 24 meters.
• Develop better ways to communicate to the fishing community the importance of following reasonable stability and survivability guidelines.
• Develop proposed design, production, operation and maintenance guidelines for various classes of fishing vessels that address basic safety, vessel design, vessel construction, vessel operation, and vessel maintenance.
• Develop a long range plan to deal with environmental issues of all types within the commercial fishing industry.

Scope of Work - The scope of work was as follows:

A. Investigate the feasibility of establishing risk-based fishing vessel stability criteria appropriate to the type of vessel and its operating area: (O-49 continues to work on this goal)

• Identify hazards associated with small vessel capsizes and sinkings and develop guidelines to reduce wave impact damage and personal injuries.
• Work with NOAA and the international meteorological community to improve predictions of dangerous local wave conditions.
• Suggest ways to improve survivability for smaller vessels and their crews when they encounter extreme waves.
• Formulate a proposed fishing vessel research program to develop a new set of scalable, non-dimensional parameters for designing and building safer vessels. It is expected that the effects of variations in length, beam, draft, freeboard, sheer line, bulwark and deckhouse arrangements and loading conditions can be correlated with a new set of design parameters for increasing small vessel safety and survivability in a variety of situations.

B. Evaluate the effectiveness of existing stability letters based on the IMO 1993 Torremolinos Protocol for vessels longer than 24 meters: (O-49 continues to work on this goal)

• The Torremolinos Protocol has been criticized by the international naval architecture community a) for lacking “rational criteria” and b) for promoting capsize resistance for the vessel at the expense of operational safety conditions on board.
• Satisfying the IMO Torremolinos criteria for fishing vessels does not insure surviving a direct hit by rogue waves, or by other extreme (breaking) wave conditions and does not address or insure crew survivability which frequently involves escaping from a vessel which is stable while inverted.
• Work with fishermen, owners, surveyors, marine insurers, fishing boat designers and builders to insure that all parties understand the purpose and implication of stability letters.

C. Develop better ways to communicate to the fishing community the importance of following reasonable stability and survivability guidelines: (Ad Hoc #12 completed several products listed below in Projects Completed)

• To most fishing boat captains, the determination of a vessel’s stability letter is a lot of black magic by the naval architect/ surveyor and the format is not useful to most fishermen and owners.
• Involve fishermen, vessel owners, insurance representatives, fishing safety trainers, Coast Guard representatives and naval architects in developing understandable, but not oversimplified, fishing vessel safety materials and training devices.

D. Develop proposed design, production, operation and maintenance guidelines for various classes of fishing vessels that address basic safety, vessel design, vessel construction, vessel operation, and vessel maintenance: (This continues to be a long range goal of Panel O-49)

• The tragic, unacceptably high fatality rates in the commercial fishing industry have a considerable basis in the lack of standards (not to mention regulations) for the overwhelming proportion of the fleet which is under 79' in length. The group will determine what organizations exist that address fishing vessel safety and operations, determine what written guidance documents and publications exist and prepare a listing of such documents and publications for use in assessing existing publications and developing guideline updates.
• Establish reasonable design and operational standards which would face the rigors of the real world for some period of time before proposing actual regulations. These standards would be graduated (depending on size of vessel and distance offshore) guidelines (standards) for design, construction and maintenance for ALL FV operating beyond three nautical miles from the baseline.

E. Develop a long range plan to deal with environmental issues of all types and marine engineering issues within the commercial fishing industry: Reestablish the Fishing Systems Panel, SC-3, to take up of issues related to the environment including the use of onboard computers to assist the operator/captain to reduce NOx and fuel consumption. (The SC-3 Group was not part of the Ad Hoc Panel.)

Papers delivered, presentations, news items, and other references

Projects Completed

• SNAME Stability Training Course for the Fishing Community (T&R Bulletin 4-24)
• Stability Training Booklet (incorporated into the new USCG Best Practices Guide to Vessel Stability, Version 2 available under Documents/CFIVAC in the FV Intranet
• Stability Training Presentation
• Stability Training Demonstration Models

T&R projects still underway

• SNAME T&R Project - Effect of Waves on a Fishing Vessels RA Curve – Paper presented at the SNAME 2005 Houston meeting.
• SNAME T&R Project - Development of Risk-Based Fishing Vessel Stability Criteria – Research still underway- anticipating a paper for the SWTC 2006

Papers Presented at Technical Meetings

Borlase, G., 2002, Research Opportunities Identified during the Casualty Analysis of the Fishing Vessel Artic Rose, Proceedings of the 6th International Ship Stability Workshop, Webb Institute, 14-16 October 2002

Johnson, B., Wallace, D., Womack, J. and Savage, R. 2000, Developing the Foundation for an Interdisciplinary Approach to Improving Fishing Vessel Safety, Proceedings of the IFISH I Conference, Woods Hole, MA, October 25-27, 2000

Johnson, B. 2000, Capsize Resistance and Survivability When Smaller Vessels Encounter Extreme Waves, Proceedings of the Rogue Wave 2000 Conference, Brest France, 29-30 November 2000

Johnson, B., and Womack, J. 2001, On Developing a Rational and User-Friendly Approach to Fishing Vessel Stability and Operational Guidance, Proceedings of the 5th International Workshop on Stability and Operational Safety of Ships, Trieste, Italy, 12-13 September 2001

Johnson, B., and Grochowalski, S., 2002. Development of a Performance Based Fishing Vessel Stability Criteria, Proceedings of the 6th International Ship Stability Workshop, Webb Institute, 14-16 October 2002

Johnson, B. and Borlase, G., 2003. Time to Flood Analysis for the Fishing Vessel Arctic Rose, Proceedings of the SNAME WMTC Conference, 2003

Womack, J., 2002, Small Commercial Fishing Vessel Stability Analysis, Where are We Now Where are We going, Proceedings of the 6th International Ship Stability Workshop, Webb Institute, 14-16 October 2002

Womack, J. and Johnson, B., 2003, An Integrated Stability Training Program for Commercial Fishing Vessel Crews and the Fishing Community, Proceedings of the IFISH II Conference, Sitka, Alaska, 22-24 September 2003

Womack, J. and Johnson, B., 2005. A Systematic Study of Wave Phasing on Vessel Righting Arm Curves, SNAME Transactions, 2005

Contacts: Prof. Bruce Johnson at aronj@verizon.net or
                 John Womack at shipsjw@aol.com

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