Page 112: of Maritime Reporter Magazine (June 1999)

The Use Of Standard Low Voltage N (Continued from page 56) increase the longevity of the motors in a demanding environment that features severe vibrations, due to warships' han- dling of quick accelerations and turns.

Based on the Navy's technical require- ments, Schelde drew up a short list of five manufacturers, out of which ABB emerged as the winner based on a com- bination of shock resilience, low noise, low EMI emissions and cost.

Motors In New Dutch Frigates "The ABB motors have the right bal- ance between quality and value for money, and in addition come with a world-wide service network, which was an advantage for the Navy," said Willem den Heijer, project manager for electri- cal systems at Schelde Shipbuilding.

Both large and small motors under- went extensive shock tests. The larger motors, up to 1 lOkW output and 805 kg in weight, were tested at the indepen- dent TNO laboratory in the Netherlands, and survived acceleration up to 13g (13 times the force of gravity).

Smaller motors were tried out at the

SHAPE laboratory in Bergschenhoek, the Netherlands. The 75 kW motor, which weighs 330kg, survived accelera- tion up to 20g; and the 2.2 kW, at 16kg, survived acceleration up to 32g.

To withstand these forces, the standard aluminium motors over 30kW were strengthened with foot mountings and end shields of nodular cast iron, used in combination with flexible mountings.

The modified design has been given its own model code by ABB, which means these are now standard motors as far as the service organization is concerned.

This could save significant costs as the ships are often far from their homeport on NATO assignments, and also have patrol duties in the territorial waters of the Netherlands Antilles and Aruba in the Caribbean.

The specially modified ABB motor is noted by the yard to be generally used across all equipment on board, though equipment manufacturers are free to select any type and size from the range. "On previous Navy ships, we have used special motors that are extremely resilient to shock, however these are very expensive," Den Heijer said. "But when we started this project, we took a standard motor straight off the shelf with a view to bringing this up to Navy standard at minimal cost." "The cost of components such as motors may not seem a significant part of the Navy's budget, but considering we have hundreds of motors on each ship, a reasonable number of ships, and hundreds of other components which may also be procured cheaper, you start to realise it all makes sense at a time when budgets are tightening," Janssen said. The keel laying of the first Dutch frigate was performed in September, scheduling the ship for a float out date of early 2000. Trials will occur during 2001, followed by the commissioning of the ship in 2002 by the Navy. The remaining three frigates are to be pro- duced at the rate of one per year.

This puts the frigates, known as the De

Zeven Provincien class, ahead of many other similar programs in the world.

First conceived in 1987, the idea was to build 52 identical frigates for use within the NATO navies. Latterly whittled down to three participating countries for the platform, encompassing the Nether- lands, Germany and Spain, it is now known as the Trilateral Frigate Co-oper- ation project. The ships built for the dif- ferent countries are not identical, as many details have been modified to accommodate different equipment and working practices in the various navies and shipyards involved.

The ships have an overall length of 472 ft. (144 m), a displacement of 6,048 tons and a crew of 202. The cruise speed is 19 knots and boost speed 30 knots, provided by a combined diesel or gas turbine propulsion system with two 18.5MW gas turbines and two 5MW diesel engines connected in a father- and-son arrangement. The frigates will be used for air defence and command at the centre of a task group.

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The preceding was authored by John Fass- bender, U.S. sales manager, LV Motors, ABB

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