Page 52: of Maritime Reporter Magazine (October 2000)

Ship Repair & Conversion

Millennium's Vibration Problem Not Related To Gas Turbines

A splashing debut with new innova- tions could best describe the inaugura- tion of Celebrity's Millennium, which occurred in England this past summer.

Ironically, the splashing part of the gas turbine-powered vessel's debut is what is now causing headaches at the Miami,

Fla.-based company. It seems that the slapping of the water against the vessel's hull is causing excess vibration. Quick to offer a remedy is Newport News

Shipbuilding (NNS), which was award-

Reliable operation by design ed the repair contract from Celebrity in

August. The company, which brain- stormed with Celebrity's executives on

September 8 at Kingsmill's conference facilities in historic Williamsburg, Va., will house Millennium at its largest dry-

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Circle 240 on Reader Service Card dock from November 18 — following the vessel's New York City debut — until December 13 when it will steam back to its homeport in Fort Lauderdale,

Fla. for its regular fall/winter itinerary of Eastern and Western Caribbean cruis- es.

MR/EN spoke with Becky Stewart.

NNS' director of ship repair, who pro- vided a full update of the project via telephone from the meeting site.

Contrary to popular belief, the myth surrounding the "Millennium mystery" began shortly after its maiden voyage on

July 1. There were scattered reports of excess noise and vibration that was sup- posedly coming from the vessel's innov- ative gas turbine engines. Rest assured, this is not the case, according to NNS'

Stewart, the vibration is the result of water slapping, or wave action against the bottom of the ship's stern hull. In order to reduce this "slapping" noise,

NNS. after talks with Celebrity and engineers from the ship's builder,

Chantiers de 1' Atlantique, will install sponsons underneath the ship's hull so that the water flow moves in a different way.

As a sidebar to what was discussed at the meeting other than the task at hand, it was decided between Celebrity and

NNS how Chantiers would transfer the electronic engineering data to NNS, so that steel fabrication of the sponsons could begin as soon as possible. Once this was determined, Stewart estimated that the scantlings were scheduled to arrive during the week of September 10, followed by the engineering data from

Chantiers by the end of the month.

Due to its expansive on-site capabili- ties, NNS can immediately begin to acquire and fabricate all steel needed for this job prior to the ship's arrival. "If the steel is readily available, we can have it fabricated in a matter of two weeks,"

Stewart said.

The yard will also be able to piece together most of the steel, as well as position it on the drydock — all from the benefits of having the electronic data prior to Millennium's arrival on Novem- ber 18. According to Stewart, this bene- fit shaves off between two to three weeks time that the ship must remain in drydock — time which is especially pre- cious to the itinerary driven cruise industry.

Currently being constructed at

Chantiers is Millennium's sistership.

Infinity, which is scheduled for a Janu- ary 2001 inauguration. Dependent upon how far along the ship is in its building process, Chantiers engineers will either incorporate this new engineering design into the vessel's superstructure, or install them as additional attachments. — by Regina P. Ciardiello 50 Maritime Reporter/Engineering News