Cruise ship Viking Sky sends out a mayday call,

[Jim Cate]

Originally Posted by jimbunyard

Couldn't resist. That specific class of ship uses either a 12 or 16 cylinder Wärtsilä V46D engine; for sheer scaling impressiveness I'll assume it has the 233 ton monster 16v engine.

Actually the engine is kinda midsized, with a piston diameter of 'only' about half a meter...

Anyway, the engine has a dry sump , so I assume the 'low oil shutdown' was a low oil pressure shutdown, but I suppose that's just splitting hairs.

As for recommended capacity of the oil tank, for the 16V, it is 26.3 cubic meters, which translates to 6947.725 gallons.

For more than anyone probably wants to know about the engine

https://www.wartsila.com/docs/defaul...=msleadscoring

Thanks, Jim, that makes interesting reading. In particular, I was surprised at the very slow load application times. Makes all those folks who expect the ship about to run over them to "throw it in reverse and stop" look pretty dead to me! As an ex dragster engine builder, throttle response measured in minutes instead of milliseconds is kinda weird!

And re the lube oil things... dry sump! Of course it would be dry sump and I should have realized that. Makes in situ oil cleansing practical, auto adding top up oil and so on too.

And I also note that there is a maximum TEMPORARY inclination of 22.5 deg. Does that mean that it will auto shut down if the vessel rolls more than that angle? Could have bearing on the incident under discussion.

At any rate, I'm impressed by all the dimensions and ratings... good stuff!

Jim

[Uncle Bob]

Originally Posted by senormechanico

Face it folks. Today's commercial airline pilots might as well be your local bus driver.

Yeah, but just try telling one of them that.

[malbert73]

Originally Posted by JPA Cate

Don't know about the cruise ship procedure, but a friend's engine goes through a pre-determined electronic checklist, and if all systems are not "go", it cannot be started. A safety feature that saves the engine while the boat drags ashore, that I think is desperately unsafe! The ship's engines may have a similar self-protective setup: oil sloshed away from sensor, oops! mustn't start!



Ann

Why I repowered with a Beta rather than a CR Yanmar.
Show me gauges and let me decide whether I want to risk the engine over the boat or my life.

[a64pilot]

Jim, did you look at the TBO’s?
I would have expected longer life, 6,000 hours for injectors, 12,000 for piston rings?

[pufferfish]

Originally Posted by sveinung

Cruises depart almost every day year round covering the entire coastline all the way up to Kirkenes. Hurtigruta, one operator, has been operating as combined mail, cargo and cruise ship along the coast for more than a century.

I heard that the Hurtigruten boat actually abandoned this very trip due to the prevailing unfavourable conditions, but the Viking line cruise ship decided to go regardless. If this is true, it would seem almost criminally stupid - the Hurtigruten people certainly know the conditions up there best.

Some 25 years ago I committed a similar mistake - by sailing a 9m Trimaran in early April from southern Denmark up to the polar circle with my wife and our 3 young children as crew (youngest barely 8 weeks old at the time), and we too got into trouble near Hustadvika (same spot where the Viking cruise ship got into trouble), which is known to be treacherous and littered with ship wrecks. We made it without having to call for assistance, but only just. I count myself lucky that my wife is still sailing with me after that experience.

[Jim Cate]

Originally Posted by a64pilot

Jim, did you look at the TBO’s?
I would have expected longer life, 6,000 hours for injectors, 12,000 for piston rings?

No, I had not noted those numbers, and they seem kinda brief to me too. But, I know so little about such machinery that I'd not say if it was unusual. If other engines have greater survival times, you'd think it would affect sales... but maybe cruise ships are not expected to be in service very long... need to update to newer, fancier designs to attract the punters!

Jim

[a64pilot]

Originally Posted by Jim Cate

No, I had not noted those numbers, and they seem kinda brief to me too. But, I know so little about such machinery that I'd not say if it was unusual. If other engines have greater survival times, you'd think it would affect sales... but maybe cruise ships are not expected to be in service very long... need to update to newer, fancier designs to attract the punters!



Jim

No, that was for the Wartsilla.
I tried looking up the specs for the engine used on the cruise ship as I don’t think it’s as large as we suppose, my SWAG is it may not carry more than 50 to 100 gls of lube oil, maybe.
It seems the biggest use for that engine is a stationary generator, which makes sense I guess if your drive is all electric, however ships do things that stationary generators don’t, like heel.
Pure supposition of course, but maybe these engines were not primarily designed as prime movers for a ship?
I can find a site, but my internet is so slow it never loaded.

I’d suppose on the truly big motors they may filter oil so well that it’s almost never changed?

[El Pinguino]

Originally Posted by Jim Cate

No, I had not noted those numbers, and they seem kinda brief to me too. But, I know so little about such machinery that I'd not say if it was unusual. If other engines have greater survival times, you'd think it would affect sales... but maybe cruise ships are not expected to be in service very long... need to update to newer, fancier designs to attract the punters!

Jim

Passenger ships tend to live longer than any other class of ship.... over 40 years isn't uncommon.... this one https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais...28/imo:7108930 and her two sisters are rising 50.....

Maintenance is on going ... they don't pull all the injectors at once.

'Big ships' have slow speed diesels turning maybe 100rpm ... such as in the piccy.... that was on a 100,000 TDW ship so not really very big. On ships like that headroom isn't an issue.

On ferries and passo ships headroom is an issue which is why they tend to have low profile medium speed diesels... often 4 abreast...

Oil purification? Even on smaller ships they purify rather than replace... often using big Alpha -Laval units.. same as you find on dairy farms... but bigger....

[Exile]

Originally Posted by a64pilot

I’d suppose on the truly big motors they may filter oil so well that it’s almost never changed?

Originally Posted by El Pinguino

Oil purification? Even on smaller ships they purify rather than replace... often using big Alpha -Laval units.. same as you find on dairy farms... but bigger....

To my knowledge, this is what diesel locomotives do as well.

[GordMay]

Viking Sky is equipped with four MAN 32/44CR engines powering Rolls-Royce Promas propulsion and manoeuvring system.
☞ https://marine.man-es.com/four-strok...stroke-engines
☞ http://marengine.com/ufiles/MAN-32_44CR.pdf

[Jim Cate]

Originally Posted by El Pinguino

Passenger ships tend to live longer than any other class of ship.... over 40 years isn't uncommon.... this one https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais...28/imo:7108930 and her two sisters are rising 50.....

Maintenance is on going ... they don't pull all the injectors at once.

'Big ships' have slow speed diesels turning maybe 100rpm ... such as in the piccy.... that was on a 100,000 TDW ship so not really very big. On ships like that headroom isn't an issue.

On ferries and passo ships headroom is an issue which is why they tend to have low profile medium speed diesels... often 4 abreast...

Oil purification? Even on smaller ships they purify rather than replace... often using big Alpha -Laval units.. same as you find on dairy farms... but bigger....

Is that a big end rod cap the chap is standing on? Crikeys! If it is only going <100 rpm at full power, you could get a hell of a ride just standing on it, goin' up and down at idle.

OSHA likely has rules against that, though...

Jim

[jimbunyard]

Oops.

The 32/44CR Man engine is a series of engine. Two different ones are used; an inline 8 and a V12. There are one of each in two separate engine rooms

The literature isn't as cut and dried as for the Wartsila

https://www.abato.nl/bestanden/weich...our-stroke.pdf

but suffice it to say that the minimum oil delivery rate respectively for the Man 8 and 12 are 23 (6075.96 gal) and 30 (7925.16 gal) cubic meters per hour...

[Exile]

Is it possible that the problem with both the cruise ship & the freighter shutting down in this case had more to do with the time it takes to restart these engines than any low oil-induced shutdown itself? In this case, both ships were able to restart their engines, but it took awhile and the delay was almost catastrophic. I just wonder if the delay was more attributable to the engine re-start procedure as opposed to remedying the low oil problem.

[a64pilot]

Never started a monster engine, but thought it was done by compressed air usually, and isn’t that big a deal?
I believe it’s compressed air activating directly on the cylinder, not an air motor starter?

I thought it takes minutes, not hours?
Evac by helicopter was going to take days, I wonder what the plan was?

[Exile]

I was thinking of a possible electronic/software hiccup in the restart procedure following the low oil shutdown. Purely speculative on my part. Just very odd that two ships in close proximity, and during the same time frame, both had engines shut down, endured lengthy delays, but were then able to restart. Only common denominator we know for certain were bad conditions & rolly sea state. Given the sea state, maybe both ships had to bypass the automatic low oil shut-down before they could restart.