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Statistics of maritime casualties continue to be the driver of improvement of human performance or rather reduction of human error. Still, too many accidents occur and some can be traced back to the lack of proper training and the lack of certain required skills and competences of the seafarer. One possible means of performance improvement is envisaged to come from (additional) high quality training, using maritime simulator systems. If so, (additional) costs will occur. But if the amount of the increased costs of training is less than the funds to be saved by avoiding accidents, it will justify that such trainig efforts should take place. The overall objective of this thesis is thus to demonstrate how and by how much, well structured, high quality, maritime simulator training can positively influence the safety and economic efficiency of shipping operations. This requires a description of the education and training efforts, simulator applications, human error catagories, performance improvement and the costing and comparison of these various items. The main and novel research efforts will be to determine what percentage performance improvement can be achieved with high quality simulator training. This is done by observations of groups of simulator trainees during various and multiple types of exercises. When the simulator training is performed in the structured manner as described, it should lead to an improved performance and thus a reduction of the number of maritime accidents by an appreciable percentage. The overall result when implemented, could then be that shipping operations become both safer and economically more efficient. As this is usually seen as a contradiction, in which safety is regarded to cost money and economy to generate money this initiative would indeed be worthwhile.

The drive to reduce costs and to ensure that ports can stay open to the maximum extent in all weathers has given impetus to the search for more flexible vessel traffic management; something that current advances in technology make it possible to contemplate. Various issues pose a significant challenge to implementation, including the inherent conservatism of the maritime community. Nonetheless, aspects of potential new services are already in regualr use. Remote pilotage is a detectable strand in EU research thinking and the port of Rotterdam is preparing for its all weather implementation. First the issues involved were established by means of a literature search followed by a series of structured interviews and a questionnaire. the results were analysed, leading to a body of results that can be used by those seeking to make decisions in this area of maritime operations. A comparison with Air Traffic Management concluded that there would be merit in adopting some of its philosophy and procedures. specific focus was then given to establishing, by means of a questionnaire, a generic set of indicators by which it can be decided whether specific vessels quality for a given new service. Throughout the research qualitative data was sought from highly qualified professionals. Two new services are proposed; remote pilotage and enhanced navigation assistance. In the hierarchy of services they fit between the provision of an on board pilot and those currently provided by a VTS. Working definitions of both services have been established. The required technology is either available or can be seen to be a realistic prospect. AIS has emerged as a key enabling technology and the exchange of passage plans will be important. However,technology alone will not suffice to make change practible. The non-technological issues are more intractable but capable of solution. Progress, if realised, can be expected to be slow; the current assessment for the spread of remote pilotage is 10-15 years. A case cannot be made for the implementation of remoter pilotage or enhanced navigation assistance on the grounds of improved safety; an acceptable level of safety must be assumed to exist. There is also a need for the appropriate legislative framework to be in place and the issue of liability to be resolved. Ultimately the prime requirement for successful implementation is the realisation of a commercial benefit to both a port and the ship owner.

In recent years there has been a rapid growth in the fast passenger ferry industry. Initially speed was the main selling point for designers, builders and operators, but as competition and choice have increased passengers are demanding better seakeeping performance. In addition designers and builders are starting to see the benefits of better seakeeping not only in terms of passenger comfort but in terms of structural strength and loading, allowing reduced structural weight and its many associated advantages. Two aspects of the seakeeping of fast ships are addressed in this thesis: response computation and the behaviour of semi-SWATH designs. Motion and load prediction for the practising naval architect has traditionally been done using strip theories, usually one closely related to the well known theory of Salvesen, Tuck and Faltinsen. This is a low Froude number theory, and although it is still being used, often successfully, for fast ships there is no rational justification for its validity in these cases. As speeds are increasing it is becoming imperative that an equivalent analysis tool suitable for higher Froude numbers be developed. This thesis proposes such a theory, based on calculation of two dimensional hydrodynamic potentials in a fixed reference frame in place of the traditional moving one. This strip theory of necessity is a time domain theory, which also allows the possi- bility of introducing non-linearities, random sea input, and even slamming events (although only the first of these is discussed in any detail in the thesis). Validation has involved comparison with traditional theory and tank testing. Most notably pitch and coupling effects have shown improved predictions, but heave tends to be over predicted. The main candidates for explana- tion of this phenomenon are argued to be wake shedding, hull entry effects, steady-unsteady interactions and three-dimensionality. The majority of fast ferries being built at present have very conventional hull forms below the calm waterline. These have poorer seakeeping than their slower equivalents because their natural frequencies are encountered in longer waves, and traditionally designers have relied on lifting surfaces to counteract the increased motions. As these vessels get faster this approach will become less viable in terms of forces involved and appendage drag penalty. The type of hull form that will reduce motion accelerations without too much sacrifice of drag is not obvious, and a family of semi-SWATHs has been investigated as a possible alternative hull form. The investigation shows that as speed is increased the advantages of SWATH like forms become much greater if the criterion is to reduce accelerations.

A series of fluorinated and non-fluorinated poly(mono- and diitoaconate)s and a perfluorinated acrylate, poly(2-(N-ethylperfluorooctanesulfanamido)ethyl acrylate) have been synthesised, by both solution and bulk chain growth polymerisation methods, characterised and some of their properties (thermal behaviour, surface energy and marine antifouling peformance) have been investigated. Chemical structures were confirmed by Gourier-transform infrared (FTIR) and nuclear magnetic resonance (1H & 13C NMR) spectroscopies, as well as mass spectrometry. Poly(itaconate)s prepared by solution chain growth polymerisation resulted in low average relative molecular mass (Mw <15000), whereas those prepared by bulk chain-growth polymerisation were of high average molecular mass (Mw ca 60000). The thermal degradation behaviour of polu(monoitaconate)s, Mwca60000, was dominated by dehydration/de-esterification reaction at ca 170 deg.C which yielded a poly(anhydride) structure. Poly(diitaconate)s Mwca 60000, were thermally stable up to ca 285 deg.C above which a chain-unzipping process resulted in the formation of monomer as the major degradation product. Glass transition temperatures (Tg) were not observed for poly(monotaconate)s; for poly(hexanoyl diitaconate) Tg was ca -18 deg.C whereas poly(1H,1H,2H,2H-perfluorodecanoyl diitaconate) exhibited two glass transition temperatures, attributed respectively to the relaxation of the alkyl side chain (ca 5 deg.C) and the overall polymer transition (ca 35 deg.C). Poly(hexadecanoyl diitaconate) was the only dditaconate to exhibit a melting endotherm. Surface energy contributions were calculated using the surface tension component (Good-Girafalco-Fowkes) theory. Recently-advanced and recently-receded contact angle measurements were performed at 25.0 + or - 0.2 deg.C for drops of water, diiodomethane and ethylene glycol on the itaconates that could be formed into films. Both recently-advanced and recently-retarded contact angles demonstrated the time-dependency of the wetting behaviour for drops of water, attributed to the slow, stepwise absorption of water by the polymer. Contact angles for drops of diiodomethane and ethylene glycol remained constant over time. Poly(1H,1H,2H,2H-perfluorodecanoyl diitaconate), PI-2, possessed the most hydrophobic surface (initial recently-advanced water contact angle: ca 120 degrees), whereas the least hydrophobic material was poly(hexadecanoyl diitaconate), PH-2; initial recently-advanced contact angle: ca 96 deg. Poly(1H,1H,2H,2H-perfluorodecanoyl diitaconate), PI-2, exhibited the lowest surface energy (advanced ca 7 mJm-2; receded: mean 9.7 mJm-2), whereas poly(hexadecanoyl diitaconate), PH-2 had the highest (advanced: ca 31-37 mJ m-2; receded 39.7 mJm-2). Poly(dodecanoyl monoitaconate), PA-5/6 exhibited surface energies of ca 22 mJ m-2 (advanced) and ca 31 mJ m-2 (receded). The low surface energy of poly(1H,1H,2H,2H-perfluorodecanoyl diitaconate), PI-2 is attributed to both the high hydrophobicity of the surface and the presence of pendent fluorocarbon side chains, which prevent the interaction of diiodomethane molecules with the polymer backbone. The relatively high surface energy of poly(hecadecanoyl diitaconate), PI-2, is due to the lower contact angles measured for this material. Increases in the basic contribution over time and its larger value relative to corresponding acidic contributions are attributed to the uptake of water by the polymer; hydrogen bonding with oxygen atoms of the ester linking group may provide the driving force behind the observed phenomenon. Antifouling performances were evaluated in seawater exposure trials over two fouling seasons. The sequence of fouling events was similar in both seasons: initial settlement by barnacles and algae follwed by settlement of tunicates. In the 1995 exposure trial polymers prepared by solution chain-growth polymerisation as well as a selection of commercial materials were evaluated. All samples exhibited almost no resistance to marine fouling. Suggested contributory factors to their poor performance was their low average relative molecular mass (Mw <15000), a variability of sample coatings or the ineffectiveness of the samples against the inhibition/prevention of settlement/attachment by marine fouling organisms. In the 1996 trial, high average molecular mass poly(itaconate) films prepared by bulk chain-growth polymerisation reactions were exposed. Poly(dodecanoyl monoitaconate)(PA-6), poly(1H,1H,2H,2H-perfluorodecanoyl monoitaconate) (PE-6) and poly(hexadecanoyl diitaconate) (PH-2) exhibited slight resistance to marine fouling, with resistances for these materials after seven months of exposure, of 13%, 18% and 34% respectively (control surfaces had fouling resistances of -5%). Areas free from coverage by fouling organisms were observed on all samples. The overall low resistance of poly(itaconate) can most likely be attributed to the absorption of water by these polymer films.

Taiwan, as an island country, should place future aspiration on the usages of ocean energy and marine resources, such as offshore wind power and deep ocean water. The sound development of marine services relies on a strong industry of maritime engineering. The perilous marine environment has posed the highest risk for all maritime civil engineering activities. It is therefore imperative to restrain the risk associated with current maritime work, other than just engineering technique itself. By doing so, the quality of maritime work can be assured, and as the improvement of overall engineering capability, Taiwan can compete worldwide in the maritime engineering industry. Maritime works have developed their own standard construction procedures. To mitigate risk of maritime works depend mainly on the domain experts¡¦ experience and know-how. However, problems appear when less experienced experts are available, or qualitative experience exists in a narrative form. It is therefore important to structure clearly an engineering risk factor relation, and quantify and control these risk factors. The proposed study will first collect and review related literatures, and then interview an expert from the designate maritime service company to establish the risk factors associated with offshore piping. Eventually a complete Bayesian network (BN) was formulated based on the cause-effect diagram, using Interpretive Structural Modeling (ISM), and experts¡¦ experience was transformed into a set of prior and conditional probability to be embedded in the BN. The BN can clearly show that certain earlier operational factors affect final operational process deeply. Besides, the backward reasoning using the BN is possible to identify the factors causing a project failure.

The problem of fleet design and fleet modelling; for decades problems regarding determining fleet sizes and optimized routing problems have formed the groundwork into the fleet design and fleet optimization for a wide range of business sectors. In most of these problems only single entities or fixed design resources are optimized for a certain route and delivery objective based on minimizing operational costs. In the naval industry, there has been a growing need for numerical methods that are able to predict what kind of fleets, in terms of size and capabilities, would be suited to achieve certain operational needs. Further than that, for shipbuilders and designers, what kind of design requirements the individual vessel platforms in such a fleet must contain constitutes the bridge in translating operational needs to ship design and system integration requirements. Especially in an era where technology advances more quickly than it takes to design a naval vessel, creating tools that are able to predict something about future fleet resilience could become an effective asset for future naval fleet development. For this, studies that contribute to developing methods that can evaluate the combined effect of individual vessel platforms from a fleet perspective are still fairly limited. The overall goal of this study was to determine how the development and application of fleet modelling tools can contribute to designing naval fleets that are more robust against future threats and missions. The objective was to extend and build on a fleet modelling method based on Systems Engineering, that is able to generate fleet compositions and produce basic individual platform design requirements for early-stage design phases of naval fleets through scripted naval scenario's. The aim was to construct a functional numerical simulation model through Mixed Integer Linear programming and extend the abilities of the method to be able to include 'future' technologies, with UXV's receiving the main focus. The overall potential and results that the numerical model produces are interesting, through an optimization process it is able to build a fleet from a wide range of platform choices and deliver basic platform design requirements. Actual combat performance of the fleets that are generated, is debatable and needs to be further investigated and tested/verified through different means. The conclusion from the study is that to design future resilient fleets, more research and development is needed in the area of naval fleet modelling and simulation since the functionality of tools available can not overcome the amount of uncertainty that the future brings. Besides that, the method under review does make it able to generate interesting fleet combinations that could spark new ideas on how we could regard the future potential of uprising technology and their combined capabilities with naval vessel platforms. / Problemet med flottdesign och flottmodellering; i årtionden har problem med att bestämma flottans storlek och optimerade routingproblem bildat grunden för flottans design och flottans optimering för ett brett spektrum av affärssektorer. I de flesta av dessa problem är mätvärden för enkel design eller fasta fartyg optimerade för en viss rutt och antal hamnar baserat på minimering av driftskostnader. Inom marinindustrin har det funnits ett växande behov av numeriska metoder som kan förutsäga vilken typ av flotta, när det gäller storlek och kapacitet, som skulle vara lämplig för att möta vissa operativa behov. För varvsbyggare och konstruktörer fungerar dessutom att tillskriva designkrav till enskilda fartygsplattformar i en sådan flotta som bron som översätter operativa behov till krav på fartygsdesign och systemintegration. Särskilt i en tid där tekniken går snabbare än vad som krävs för att utforma ett marinfartyg kan skapandet av verktyg som kan förutsäga motståndskraften hos en framtida flotta vara en effektiv tillgång för framtida marinutveckling. För detta är studier som bidrar till att utveckla metoder som kan utvärdera den kombinerade effekten av enskilda fartygsplattformar ur ett flottperspektiv fortfarande ganska begränsade. Det övergripande målet för denna studie var att avgöra hur utvecklingen och tillämpningen av verktyg för modellering av flottor kan bidra till att utforma marinflottor som är mer robusta mot framtida hot och uppdrag. Målet var att utöka och bygga på en flottmodelleringsmetod baserad på Systems Engineering, som kan generera flottanheter och producera grundläggande individuella plattformskrav för designfasen i de tidiga stadierna av marina flottar genom scenarier för manusskrivning. Syftet var att konstruera en funktionell numerisk simuleringsmodell genom Mixed Integer Linear Programmering och utöka metodens förmåga för att kunna inkludera 'framtida' teknologier, med UXV: er som huvudfokus. Den övergripande potentialen och resultaten som den numeriska modellen ger är intressanta, genom en optimeringsprocess kan den bygga en flotta från ett brett spektrum av plattformsval och leverera grundläggande krav på plattformsdesign. Den faktiska stridsprestandan för de genererade flottorna kan inte bedömas och måste undersökas vidare och testas / verifieras med olika metoder. Studien drar slutsatsen att utformning av framtida motståndskraftiga flottor kräver mer forskning och utveckling inom marinmodellering och simulering, eftersom funktionaliteten hos nuvarande tillgängliga verktyg inte kan övervinna osäkerheten i framtiden. Förutom det gör metoden under granskning det möjligt att generera intressanta flottkombinationer som kan utlösa nya idéer om hur vi kan betrakta den framtida potentialen för upprorsteknologi och deras kombinerade kapacitet med sjöfartygsplattformar.