Page 52: of Maritime Reporter Magazine (July 2016)

EYE ON DESIGN

New Multiphase Test Facility Under Construction hrough the STW ‘Perspective Pro- gram’ a major public-private coopera- tion named SLING has been created.

TThe SLING consortium comprises the technology foundation STW, four top Dutch universities, representatives from the LNG, shipping and shipbuilding industry, engineering companies and MARIN. SLING aims to plug the gaps in the industry’s knowledge about new technology for LNG tanks with crucial cost sav- ing potential.

The key to designing cost-effective LNG tanks is a shift to a ? rst-principle approach to assess the dominant design loads, i.e. sloshing impacts.

The current design method relies on sloshing model tests and requires a calibration based on operational feedback, which however does not yet exist for new applications.

This prevents new tank designs which maxi- mise use of the ship’s capacity by optimising tank geometry, and minimising Boil-Off-Gas by optimizing the strength of the tank.

SLING brings together an unparalleled, mul- tidisciplinary team to draw-up a ? rst-principle approach to assess sloshing by disentangling the complex sloshing physics through advanced ex- periments and numerical simulations.

Multiphase Test Facility: A World First

The research requires a multiphase facility, which consists of a controlled environment with multiple test setups installed inside, i.e. a ? ume tank with a wave maker installed on one end of the ? ume and an instrumented, transverse wall at the other end and a large ? at impactor and a of the water- vapor boundary for a large range small disk impactor.

The controlled environment consists of a 15 m of temperatures (5°C to 200°C) and pressures (5 mbar to 10 bar). long x 2.5 m diameter autoclave with observa-

The test facility will be located at MARIN in tion windows; a gas and liquid supply system; and a heating/ cooling system for the autoclave Wageningen, the Netherlands and due to open and test setups, facilitating testing in the vicinity late 2017.

52 Maritime Reporter & Engineering News • JULY 2016

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