Case Study
40 Tonne Engine Lift
OVERVIEW
Malin was approached by a client with an urgent requirement to lift each of a vessel’s two 40 tonne main engines 2m vertically within the engine room, in order to allow access to the crankshaft bearings for essential maintenance.
Previous efforts to conduct the same job on a sister ship at a foreign shipyard had entailed lifting from the deckhead, which had necessitated the removal of insulation, pipework, and cabling, as well as significant internal hotwork, resulting in a difficult, disruptive and very expensive project for the customer.
Malin approached the problem differently, and targeted an innovative solution by developing a bespoke 4-post hydraulic lifting frame which could bear directly on the engine bed adjacent to the engine mounts, hence requiring no structural adaption to the vessel.
The lifting frame was designed to be modular so it could be disassembled, moved into the engine room piece by piece via a 1m x 1.3m hatch, and assembled in situ using the existing one tonne overhead gantry, with no disassembly of the vessel or its wider sub-systems required.
The design process was complicated by the fact that the engine repairs needed completed whilst the vessel was afloat, hence the lifting frame had to accommodate significant potential transverse loads which might arise from vessel movement, as well as vertical load.
Following site visits and a 3D scan, the lifting frame was rapidly and iteratively designed by Malin’s engineers in-house, allowing it to be fabricated over the Christmas period before being load tested to 48 tonnes in accordance with Lloyd’s Register CLAME in Malin’s workshop, and delivered to site; the system was installed in the ship the first week in January, less than 8 weeks from the initial approach from the client.
Project: Main Engine Maintenance – Bespoke Lifting System
Cargo: 2 × 40Te main engines
Lift: Approx. 2m vertical lift
Equipment: Bespoke 4-post modular hydraulic lifting frame
Access: 1m × 1.3m engine room hatch
Testing: 48Te load test – Lloyd’s Register CLAME
Services: 3D survey, structural and mechanical design, hydraulic engineering, fabrication, load testing, installation and technical support