Vulcanus Study Tour 2008

Vulcanus Study Tour 2008

Travel Report

Hamburg, Wismar and Papenburg


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Chairman’s preface It is my pleasure to present as chairman of Vulcanus to present the

travel report of the Vulcanus Study Tour 2008. The preparations of the VST, though in an early stage, started as soon as the board was

appointed. Being the board, Hans, Erik-Jan and I have spent many hours in the board room to schedule the tour. Though there were

some struggles to deal with and now and then an alternative is applied, now the tour is completed on may conclude: „The Vulcanus

Study Tour 2008 was at least as successful as the foregoing VST‟s‟.

Unfortunately no future officers and their superiors of the Royal Dutch Navy College were participating this years VST, which

reduced the amount of the group considerably compared to foregoing study tours. On top of that the RDNC decided not to

facilitate the transportation as they did before, which made us drive

ourselves with rented means of conveyance. Lori and Johan, two out of four members of the foregoing Vulcanus

board, were joining the tour. They had to get used to not being part of this years board, but their help was more than welcome and their

sense of responsibility is appreciated. Further three Chinese PhD-students of the TU Delft were

„embedded‟. The accompany of Wei Zheng, Wei Shi and Ding Yu gave the group not only an international glance but they also

brought a good atmosphere by their bright smiles. Last but not least Roelf van Till, representing the employees of the

TU Delft, apart from the PhD-students of course, was also joining the study tour. His experience as route planner helped us a lot at

the journeys through foreign Germany.

The travel report consist of experiences of the participants

mentioned above. They were kindly asked to write a small article of a part of the tour which was allocated to them.

Besides thanking Hans and Erik-Jan for the great corporation in

scheduling the VST, I extend my sincere gratitude and appreciation to all the sponsors. Without their contributions we would end up

with a study tour on our bicycles through and around Delft!

Dirk Hoek chairman Dispuut Vulcanus 2007/2008


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Table of contents Chairman‟s preface ................................................................... 3

Table of contents ...................................................................... 4 Vulcanus and its board .............................................................. 5

Monday, May 19th ..................................................................... 7 Tuesday morning, May 20th ....................................................... 8

Tuesday afternoon, May 20th .................................................... 11 Wednesday morning, May 21st ................................................. 13

Wednesday afternoon, May 21st ............................................... 15 Thursday morning, May 22nd .................................................... 19

Thursday afternoon, May 22nd .................................................. 21 Friday, May 23rd .................................................................... 20

Sponsor page ......................................................................... 20


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Vulcanus and its board Vulcanus is a debating society of the Delft University of Technology.

The association is for MSc-students of sections Marine Engineering and Diesel Engines. Mainly through currently working, previous

student-members Dispute Vulcanus has good contact with several companies. To put things more formally these students chose the

Master Marine Technology of the faculty 3ME at the TU Delft

Being the board we are organising, next to meetings at café de Waag visits to companies in our field of study, i.e., companies in the

marine industry and their suppliers. During the semesters we schedule study visits to companies in the

Netherlands or just over the border with Germany or Belgium. Once every year we schedule the Vulcanus Study Tour, which comprises

of study visits at companies in a foreign country.

The board; Erik-Jan (l), Dirk (m), Hans (r)


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Monday, May 19th

At 10.pm of 19th, May, we were all waiting in front of the 3ME

building for an exciting study trip to Germany. It is a bit pity that there were only 9 people attending the trip this year. However, we

had a precise plan which was decided by our chairman and everything went very well in this trip.

About 12.am we had a break

in Nunspeet for picking up Erik-Jan and also had a fast

lunch there. After about one hour, we went through the

boundary of the Holland and Germany, starting the way to

Papenburg. And around 1.pm,

we arrived at Papenburg in time. At first, we went to an

old ship just like a museum, and the speaker gave us

elaborate introduction of the shipyard. After about one hour, we drove to the shipyard, which took us about 10 minutes.

The Meyer Werft shipyard was founded in 1795. The company has

been in the hands of the Meyer family for six generations. Bernard Meyer has been Managing partner since 1982. Over the last

decades of 20th century, Meyer Werft has acquired an excellent international reputation for the construction of car and passenger

ferries, passenger vessels, gas tankers, live stock carries and, most of all, luxury cruise liners.

We visited some workshops, only through the glass plate, where the ship was produced block by block. With the new preparation halls,

the shipyard has established the biggest laser technology center in Europe. Also, the construction of specialized ships, mainly of

passenger and cruse ship, is highly demanding large-scale project from the viewpoint of engineering and logistics. Computer-aided

technologies for laying out, planning, design and completion of these ships have been integrated in all parts of the shipyard. In

addition, Meyer Werft broke new ground in cooperation with the aircraft industry: the adaption and utilization of the CATIA computer

software offers new methods in the production of three-dimensional drawings for optimizing the layout and design of the ship.


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Two hours slipped by since we arrived in the shipyard, and we had to go on the trip to Hamburg because we must arrive in Hamburg

before it had gotten dark.

At around 8.pm, we reached in Hamburg. But it was difficult for us to find the hotel in such an unfamiliar city. Until 9.30. pm, we were

succeeded.

In the end, it is mentionable that in the first day, our Chairman

DIRK HOEK and Treasurer HANS NICOLAI were honorable, they were driving the whole day, although they are stronger, about 8

hours‟ driving was really a heavy work.

Written by Ding Yu

Tuesday morning, May 20th

Everybody survived the first night in Hamburg. We stay in the A&O

Hotel next to the main road through the city. So after a night in strange beds we woke up with the calm sound of braking cars and

claxons, because everyone left the window open hoping for fresh air over night after a stuffy hot day.

Around nine every member of the Vulcanus group enjoyed its

breakfast; some had to look for the cheese a little longer than others, but after all a surprisingly good breakfast to start the day

with. After some irritations about the single elevator for the entire eight floors of a huge hotel, everyone arrived downstairs with

optimistic intentions to leave for our first cultural visit in Hamburg. The night before the scale of the city plan was explored, and it was

decided that the “Submarine Museum” was doable by foot. A great

mistake was made; the berth of the U-434 was a little further than the organization thought, with little as an understatement. But

nevertheless we persisted despite the distance and the dusty roads with dangerous high speed trucks and we arrived safely at the

Submarine Museum in Hamburg which exhibits the U-434. This submarine is built in 1976 in Russia; she is 90 meters long with a

diameter of almost 9 meters. The maximum dive depth is 400 meters however the construction depth is 600 meters.


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After some tarvajärvi pictures, which will be an activity for the rest of the week, we entered the impressive submarine at the quay. The

entrance ladder leads you to the torpedo room with six torpedo tubes and place for 24 torpedoes with a caliber of 533 mm and a

speed trough the water of about 60 knots. At the background an exciting melody is heard, to suggest you are in a real war situation.

A small opening is leading us to

the next compartment. This is the

officer‟s deck with the pantry, mess and cabins. One thing to be

noticed it the small space everywhere. Normally this

submarine carries a crew of 84 marines including 16 officers, 16

subofficers an up to 52 seamen. We are with a group of only 10

people and I‟m already irritated by the amount of people in such a small space. This gives a good

indication of the lack of privacy for the crew back then in this submarine.

In the third compartment we are situated below the command

centre, here the familiar sound of the sonar is heard. Walking along

the shower with the ping every few seconds is quite scary, especially when you think about a real situation were a hostile

frigate has found your submarine and the „pingfrequency‟ goes up.

The fourth compartment is an equipment room and amongst other things the auxiliary engine is placed here next to the gyroroom. In

this compartment it is not possible for me to stand up any more. I hope the Russians of 25 years ago are smaller than I am. Here are

also the officer cabins of the engineers, these are 4 person cabins with intractable beds. The radio room and special intelligence room

is on this deck as well.

The fifth compartment starts with the engine control room with a Russian telegraph and is followed by the diesel engine room. Here

the sound of running engines is played and everybody relaxes at

this comforting frequency of running diesel engines. There are three six cylinder diesel engines with three times 5200 hp (=3870 kW)

connected to three generators which converters the mechanical energy into electrical energy. Imagine the temperature rises to 60

degrees Celsius in this compartment and you need to do maintenance in a space that is too small, not the best job in the

world I think.


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In the sixth compartment an electrical motor is driving the shaft which is connected to the propeller at the back of the submarine, or

is converted to batteries to collect energy for stealth situations. This Russian submarine can reach a maximum speed of 16 knots

underwater and 13 knots at the surface.

Well after a good impression of the submarine, two people (me and Dirk) went off to get the minivan and the rest could enjoy itself on

the terrace in the sun. Also the way back to the hotel was a

substantial walk, but not worse than the drive back to the submarine museum to pick up the others. Due to the overload of

roadwork in the industrial area we were bound to find alternative route through all the roadblocks.

We drove to the city centre and landed near the fish market to find

a sweet tapasbar to have our lunch. It was a bit difficult for the Chinese Vulcanus members to find something good on a German

menu, but finally everyone had something nice to eat before our afternoon activity commenced.

Written by Lori van Donge

Tuesday afternoon, May 20th

I joined a study tour to Hamburg last week. After the visit to U-boot museum, we strolled round the old quarter of Hamburg to the world

famous harbour. This part of Hamburg looked much better than the under construction area where we lived, with several nice old

towers and churches.

Suddenly the River Elbe came into view after a turning corner. We

got off the bus, ran to and hang on the rail of the levee watching at the open river. It was a nice day with the sun shining brightly. The

glistening reflecting of the sun on ripples, and the spectacular compact bunch of suspension bracket and lifting frame prompted us

to take a lot of pictures there.

14:06:37


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Next we got on a yacht to enjoy the scenery on both sides of the river and got the idea how Hamburg harbour works. We saw various

sorts of seagoing vessels from and to all over the world busy collecting or unloading containers full with goods like cars, bulk

goods and other products round the clock by highly automatic magnetic pick-up; small harbour vessels wend their way through

the harbour basins and across the Elbe, past the docks with dry

docked sea ships; big ships laid on the floating dock receiving routine maintenance in Elbe; several lifeboats were under testing

nearby. All of these reflected the thriving scene of the harbour, and the city. What‟s more, the villa and house amongst the quiet forest

on the river sides showed us the leisure and high quality life of the Hamburg citizen.

The yacht pulled in shore slowly. We left the spectacular harbour

after an emotional farewell.

Written by Zheng Wei


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Wednesday morning, May 21st

Promptly at 10 o‟clock, our designated driver Dirk parked in front of

the MAN Diesel Primeserv maintenance facility.

We were met by Dipl.-Ing. Jürgen Bunde, senior consultant with Primeserv. Having worked with MAN

for almost 40 years, his knowledge and experience made him a perfect host.

Primeserv is MAN‟s worldwide service network, and Hamburg is one of its main repair and reconditioning

facilities. Currently 289 people are employed there, with sales in 2007 of M€ 52.

Engine building in Hamburg started in 1939, at first mostly marine power. After the war, only a small service plant continued. But in

1955, production started again; one or two two-strokes and several

four-strokes were built per month. But as the shipbuilding relocated to the far east, the engine building

went there too. Several far east companies have acquired license to build MAN diesels, the first already in 1926: Mitsui of Japan.

The core competence of Primeserv Hamburg is repair,

reconditioning and customer care for 2-stroke and 4-stroke engines and turbo chargers. Service can takes place at the Hamburg yard or

on site. An intriguing example of on site repair was a crankshaft of a large

two stroke engine. A crimped journal had become displaced when the engine suddenly was stopped. With liquid nitrogen and gas

torches the joint was opened, readjusted and crimped again, all within a few days!

During the workshop tour, the first thing we could see was a large crankshaft being machined. Furthermore we saw piston crowns of

all kinds of engine types, exhaust valves and seats and fuel pump elements being reconditioned.

The sheer size of those large pistons and crankshafts and the apparent ease with which they were handled was most impressive!


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I‟d like to thank mr. Bunde very much for this interesting tour and

his knowledgeable comments.

Written by Roelf van Till

Wednesday afternoon, May 21st

Royal Dutch Shell, commonly known simply as Shell, is a

multinational oil company of British and Dutch origins. We are students from Dutch university, but, we chose to visit Shell abroad,

in the afternoon of May, 21st, we visited the Shell laboratory for Products, Applications and Development (PAE Labor), in the south

of Hamburg.

The first sight of the laboratory was a few large tanks in that area.

According to the guiders introduction, each of these tanks has a capacity of 50,000 m3, and duo to the danger of the crude oil, they

are away from each for 50 m.


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The first part to help us to know the laboratory was a presentation. At the very beginning of the presentation, we were told some

security issues. Because this is a laboratory for oil research, smoke is forbidden almost everywhere, expect one small container with

only two seats. And we had to remember the way to get out of the building, in case some accident happened. Also, we were not

allowed to take photos without a special permission. All these issues made us to understand, it was a real high-security place.

The presentation was on „the team of the marine and power

innovation centre‟. The Shell Company has a wide range of business, including oil products, renewable gas and power, chemical

and selling, and it has a lot of P&D center located in Germany, the Netherland, Japan, India, USA and etc. This laboratory does

research for downstream business, such as global lubricants, B2B aviation and power test for marine engine. The research follows a

special procedure: first, doing experiment in the laboratory, then, the experiment on real engines, this is the most expensive part, due

to there are a lot of different combinations of identical oil and test oil. After the engine test, the oil needs to be test in the real world,

the on-board test.

In the presentation, there was an example to introduce how

important the lubrication oil is. Most of the fishing vessels always operate at extreme conditions, which are very bad for engine and as

a result, the cylinders are easy to be damaged. Then, the fuel can

escape from the cylinder and cause the fuel consumption increase. There are some strategies to solve this problem, for instance, to

develop now products to clean the cylinder, to change the operation strategy or to improve the fuel quality. The solution of Shell is their

new product, the special lubrication oil, Shell Gadinia AL. According to their research, although this kind of lubrication oil is more

expensive compare with the normal one, it worth to be used to protect the engine, which will cost much more money, if it is

damaged.

After the presentation, we had a guided tour around the laboratory.

In the laboratory, they did experiments with a wide range from small engines used in trucks and large diesel engine used in ships.

An interesting thing is, in order to save the experimental cost, they only use one cylinder of each engine, and this is enough to

represent the influence of the lubrication oil on engines.

Written by Wei Shi


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Thursday morning, May 22nd

After an ample sleep in the night, we started the last day trip at

7.30 am. Most of us had an enough breakfast in the morning. And the driver, our Chairman, DIRK HOEK had an excellent driving

technology, so we arrived in Wismar, the city that Aker shipyard is in, ahead of half an hour. We made a short break in a small coffee

house and some of us had coffee or ice-cream to wait for 10 o‟clock.

When we arrived at the shipyard, a young worker received us and gave us a perfect presentation first. Then he took us to walk around

the whole shipyard. It was fortunate for us to see a main diesel engine, which was not installed in a ship under construction.

Aker Yards ASA is an international shipbuilding group focusing on

sophisticated vessels and being one of the world's largest

shipbuilders. The group is organized through three business areas; Cruise & Ferries, Merchant Vessels and Offshore & Specialized

Vessels. Aker Yards comprises 18 yards in Brazil, Finland, France, Germany, Norway, Romania, Vietnam and Ukraine with some

21,000 employees. A new shipyard will be built in Primorsk of Russia, as there was a large amount demand of icebreaker ship

there.

During the visiting, we saw the diesel engine in the workshop. The main engine came from MAN diesel engine Company, but one was

made in Japan and the other one was made in Poland. Also the auxiliary diesel engines were from Japan. We discussed the

construction and principle of diesel engine for a long time, as we mostly are “diesel engine” engineer.

It was also a strange thing that one ship split two parts producing in two shipyards, and then were assembled and installed in the

shipyard of Wismar. The speaker gave us more explanations on it. Maybe the shipyard was not big enough, so it had no option for

them but to use this method.

After a lunch in the shipyard, which was typical Germen fast food, we spent the midday time in the center of Wismar.

Written by Ding Yu


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Thursday afternoon, May 22nd

After an excellent lunch at the Aker yard, we visited the beautiful

centre of Wismar. Because our visit at Schottel was scheduled late in the afternoon, we had time to visit Wismar. Wismar is a small

town and lies on the Baltic Sea in Northern Germany. The centre of the old town has a huge square and is called the Market Place. The

Market Place is surrounded by elegant buildings with styles of late eighteenth century. The excellent outside temperature and a sunny

sky created a pleasant visit of Wismar centre. The departure from Wismar centre to Schottel was scheduled at

14:15. The bus was parked just outside the centre of Wismar. The agreed place to gather was the bus parking place. Everybody was

on time and on the agreed place except two Dutch students. The two Dutch students (including the writer of this article) were still

shopping and could not decide whether they should buy the blue or

black shirt! The two students showed up after 15 minutes of waiting and created a delay.

We were welcomed at Schottel by Hans Herbert Dünow. The bow tie

Mr. Dünow welcomed us in a conference room. The company visit was divided in two parts. The first part was a general presentation

of the Schottel group and Schottel products and the second part was a visit of the factory side.

Schottel develops, designs and produces azimuthing propulsion

systems and manoeuvring systems up to 30 MW for vessels. Schottel was founded by Josef Becker in 1921. Schottel has 1220

employees worldwide located. Mr. Dünow presented us the product range of Schottel and which type of ships suitable for Schottel

products. The core businesses of Schottel are the offshore industry

and towing industry.

Schottel has three factories and are located in Wismar, Spay (Germany) and Suzhou (China). The factory in Wismar produces

rudder propellers and Controllable Pitch Propellers (CPP). The factory in Wismar was acquired to Schottel in 1999. The old name

of the factory was WPM Wismarer Propeller- und Maschinenbau. The factory in China produces transverse thursters and was founded in

1995. The engineering and development department of Schottel is based in Spay. The headquarters of Schottel is based in Spay.

After the exciting presentation about the history and the main

business of Schottel, Mr. Dünow showed us the factory. A part of the factory side was under construction. The factory will be

expanded with a new assembling and storage hall this summer.


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Schottel is a fast growing company and needs to expand. The current factory cannot handle the tremendous demand on their

products. Many thrusters, nozzles, shafts and propeller blades were stored outside the factory. The new assembling hall will relieve this

problem.

The factory visit was existed. The visit provided

us a good insight in

propulsion engineering. Mr. Dünow showed and

explained us enthusiastic Schottel`s products. The

factory tour ended at the entrance of the factory.

The chairman of dispute Vulcanus thanked Mr.

Dünow for the factory tour and the presentation. The chairmen gave a present to Mr. Dünow

and a final group photo was made.

After the visit of Schottel, we went back to Wismar centre. The weather was still outstanding. We visited again the Market Place in

downtown Wismar. We went to an outdoor cafe and we sit out in

the sun. The day ended in a nice German fish restaurant. After a good diner, we went back to Hamburg. We had a pleasant and

exciting visit in Wismar!

Written by Johan de Jager


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Friday, May 23rd

After having a good breakfast we gathered at 08:45 near the

reception of the hotel. We divided ourselves over the car and mini bus, stuffed them with luggage and drove off. Sometimes it was

busy on the autobahn, but „heavy traffic‟ is expressed somewhat exaggerated. It took us about three hours to get to the Dutch

border near Oldenzaal. There we had fixed up our break. To exit the highway at that point, and at that time, it required some guts to cut

through a column of military lorries, but of course we succeeded.

After a fast lunch the routes of car and mini bus splitted up; Hans, who was driving the car, dropped Erik-Jan at Nunspeet and drove

itself home in Delft. Myself, I drove the mini bus to the faculty and let Lori down near Veenendaal, where she shortly after that is

picked up by her boyfriend Bart. Around 16:00 we arrived at faculty

3ME at the TU Delft where the mini bus was released from some sleeping passengers.

All what remained for me was to bring back the mini bus to the

branch of the leasing company in Katwijk aan Zee, and last but not least the few minutes on my bicycle driving myself home from the

leasing company, thinking over the nice week we gone through…

Written by Dirk Hoek

Wednesday’s diner, together with Claudio


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Vulcanus Study Tour 2008