The company announced on Nov. 1 that it has obtained design approval for a lashing-free container ship from the American Bureau of Shipping (ABS) and the Liberian Flag Administration, BusinessKorea reports.
A container ship closes the hatch cover, which is a cargo hold cover, after loading containers inside a cargo and loads containers again on it in order to load as many containers as possible. For this, it is necessary to fix the containers loaded on the hatch cover to a steel structure called a “lashing bridge,” which acts as a support. This work is called lashing.
Hyundai Heavy Industries removed the lashing bridge and hatch cover by using a new-concept device called a portable bench (product name: SkyBenchV2) that receives the load of the containers on the deck and transfers it to the hull. The company has instead extended the cell guide, which enables a vertical stacking of containers, to the deck. The containers on top of the deck are fixed by the extended cell guide, eliminating the need for lashing.
By applying the portable bench, lashing, which takes a lot of time and money, can be omitted, so the convenience, efficiency, and safety of container unloading work is expected to be greatly improved.
Hyundai Heavy Industries has completed domestic and foreign patent applications for the lashing-free container ship and portable bench.