CONTAINER SHIP HULLS WITH EXTREMELY REDUCED DRAUGHTS,

ADAPTED TO DANUBE RIVER OPERATING CONDITIONS,

IN VUE OF REDUCING CHANNEL BED DEEPENING INVESTMENT

Project necessity
According to EU statistics, container transit number through Constantza terminal was 450,000 in 2004,
1,037,000 in 2006, and will increase up to 3,000,000 until 2010.
The Danube usability as transport route being now less than 10% of its capacity, the best alternative for the
overcrowding of roads and railways is the transport of containers on the Danube River.
A Danube containership carrying 180 containers is equivalent to 90 trucks of 25 tones, forming of about 9
km in length convoy on the high-speed roads.
The major difficulty of cargo shipping on the Danube River is the small channel depth in the dry summer season.
In the ‘60s, the Danube Commission decided works for ensuring the river bed guaranteed depth of 3.5 m, from
Vienna to Sulina. Implying enormous and continuous investments founds, these works could never been realized.
The proposed project task is to adapt the ship draught to the channel depth. In this respect, new concepts of
extremely reduced draught and unusual dimensions ratios for inland ships are necessary. Variants of ship
hulls with a breadth/draught ratio between 7 and 12 are to be analyzed in this project; for comparison, the usual
breadth/draught ratio is 2.8 ÷ 4.8.

Economic advantages in regional and European context

The main advantages of reduced draught ship hulls concept, adapted to existing Danube channel depth, are:
avoiding of enormous and permanent costs for channel major deepening activity, by significant reducing
of the channel deepening intervention;
 decongestion of the overcrowded roads and railways;
 lower containers transport costs on river, about 2.5 times smaller than by road transport;
 avoiding of a strong rejection intervention from the European ecologist organizations, due to
minimization of ecosystem damage.

Technical characteristics
Comparative study (CFD and experimental model testing in the towing tank), for two hull variants is proposed:
• Hull no. 1: 176 containers disposed in 2 layers, 8 containers in wide,
draught ∼ 1,8 m, breadth ∼ 22 m, length ∼ 97 m.
Such a ship will be able to navigate at full load from Passau (Germany) to Constantza during the whole year, dry
season included. The ship draught and deadweight will be according to the average statistically determined
containers weight (13 t), indicated by European studies.
• Hull no. 2: 180 containers disposed in 3 layers, 6 containers in wide,
draught ∼ 2.4 m, breadth ∼ 16.9 m, length ∼ 91 m.
Such a ship will be able to navigate at full load on the Danube, from Passau (Germany) to Constantza, probably
for 9 month in a year. In the dry summer season it will navigate partly loaded. For the most unfavourable
condition (draft ∼ 1,8 m, adapted to water depth in the dry season), the ship will still be able to carry 120
containers disposed in two layers.
Other requirements for this transport vector, to be assured by ICEPRONAV project:
- 16÷18 km/h upstream speed, without generating waves which erode the river banks (for comparison,
the upstream speed of barges is of only 12÷14 km/h);
 - propulsion efficiency maximization, in spite of high installed power on propellers operating in a limited
draft.
The possibility of using of the containership hulls to design a very wide deck Ro-Ro ship, allowing random access
on deck, is to be also studied.

Estimated Project Impact

The river containerships of relative small dimensions, will be attractive for the ship-owners in the countries for
which the operating route of the ships is feasible: the European Danube Corridor, meaning Germany, Austria,
Slovakia, Hungary, Croatia, Serbia, Romania, Bulgaria and Ukraine.
The second proposed ship hull variant will be of sea river-type. This could be attractive for ship-owners in the
Black Sea and East Mediterranean area, such as Russia, Georgia, Turkey, Greece, Cyprus, Syria and Israel.
Thus, users belonging to these groups will be able to make waterborne transport through the “heart “ of Europe.
Beginning with 2015, ship-owners in the Danube Corridor countries will be able to contract at ICEPRONAV the
detail project of 180 containers river ships, optimized for operating in the real Danube channel natural status
condition.