Marine machinery failures

Article type: Research Article

Authors: Pemberton, H.N.

Affiliations: Lloyd’s Register of Shipping

Abstract: Knowledge of service experience, especially in regard to machinery defects, is of considerable value to both marine engine builders and shipowners, particularly if this knowledge can be utilized in improving design or materials or in preventing mal-operation of machinery. Lloyd’s Register of Shipping, with its world wide network of surveyors surveying some 11,000 ocean going merchant ships, is in a unique position to know what happens to ships’ machinery in service and how the more important casualties are dealt with. It is right that some of this information should be fed back into industry, and one of the ways in which this can be done is for the Society’s Chief Engineer Surveyor to present a paper from time to time describing some of the serious cases that have come to his notice. The present paper, which is by no means comprehensive, deals mainly with cases which impinge on design, construction and materials. Some of the failures mentioned in the paper were due to causes which may not have arisen previously; others are of a type reasonably well known but which nevertheless continue to recur, either because their importance is not appreciated or the lessons that they teach have not been sufficiently studied.

DOI: 10.3233/ISP-1962-99703

Journal: International Shipbuilding Progress, vol. 9, no. 97, pp. 391-406, 1962