The PIANC ‘Guidelines for the design of fender systems’ MarCom report of WG 33 – 2002 (short WG33) contains a table (4.4.1) with recommended maximum hull pressures on various vessels. Fender manufactures provide maximum hull pressures of their fenders. The stated maximum hull pressures of cylindrical fenders do not match the recommend values by WG33 for gas carriers, oil tankers or container vessels. However, cylindrical fenders are in use for over 25 years in Northwestern Europe on major container terminals without any complaints by masters, ship owners, pilots or any other stake holder.
In the Hamburg – Le Havre range only the Port of Rotterdam Authority had, mid eighties, these fenders (Delta Terminal) checked against the old fender guidelines. After WG33 release all new projects are designed with panels with cone fenders or similar.
The maintenance department of the Port of Rotterdam has very bad experience with panel fenders as recently applied at the new container terminals and very positive experience with the ‘old’ cylindrical fenders.
The positive user experience with cylinders and the negative maintenance experience with panels lead to plans with cylindrical fenders on a LNG berth and on 6 oil berths. As these cylindrical fenders do not match WG33 recommendations, the actual ship-fender interaction was investigated by FEM calculations. The out come of these FEM calculations is that cylindrical fenders can safely be used for both LNG and Oil tankers.
This paper explains the recent FEM calculations and the old calculations for the Delta Terminal and proves that cylindrical fenders can be used safely on all major berths in all ports and that table 4.4.1 in WG33 needs to be updated.