Chapter 10

Engine Room Construction

The most important item in the design of an engine room construction or a pump
room construction of a tanker is to pay attention to the machinery installed there.
Usually the hull structure is to be designed based on the stress not on the deflection.
In the case of a small ship the deflection is too small to cause any trouble to the
machinery. However in the case of a large ship the deflection of the hull structure
causes some troubles.
Deformation in the turbine flat on which the turbines for the cargo oil pumps
are installed, causes a shaft misalignment between turbine and cargo oil pump. The
deflection of a double bottom in the engine room badly affects the crank shaft of
the main Diesel engine and the shafting. It also badly affects, in a turbine ship, the
alignment of the reduction gear and the shafting which causes non-uniform teeth
contact between the bull gear and the pinion, as shown in Fig. 10.5.2. Excess bearing
load on a shaft bearing sometimes causes damage to the bearing white metal.
Another important item concerning engine room construction is that the structure
is also the foundation of the superstructure, especially in the case of an aft engine
and an aft bridge arrangement. Inadequate foundation may cause some vibration
problems. Usually the engine room and the superstructure arrangement is decided
from the viewpoints of operation, handling and habitability. With these considerations a poor foundation will result. A proverb says a ship designed by a designer
who has no experience in the hull structure design will be malformed. This proverb
will be true in the hull structure design of an engine room.
In the hull structure design of an engine room, the machinery arrangement is, of
course, important, and besides this a hull structure designer should pay attention to
the hull form in the area of the engine room. In the energy saving era after the oil
crisis a hull form designers created very narrow forms in the area of the engine room
to improve the propulsion efficiency. A bow structure has been affected by the new
hull form of a bulbous bow, and the engine room structure has been also affected
by a bulbous stern and an open bulbous stern. In these hull forms a big propeller is
fitted at the end of a slender and weak cantilever.
In the hull structure design of an aft engine room which has a big main engine
at the center and which is situated near the propeller with an exciting force, more
attention should be paid to anti-vibration design than in the case of a semi-aft or
a midship engine room. A container ship built before the oil crisis had two diesel

M. Mano et al., Design of Ship Hull Structures, DOI 10.1007/978-3-540-88445-3 28,

c Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2009


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