Bureau Veritas expands subsea noise-cutting agreement

Initially focused on cruise ships, the firms are already working to support the design and build of vessels with improvements to noise and vibration, enhancing crew comfort but also minimising impact on marine life.

Now a greater range of vessels can be supported with BV and TSI’s predictive calculations, and as well as CTVs and OSVs, naval vessels, ferries and gas carriers are now included.

The two firms have worked together for 20 years.

“Their differentiator and how BVS/TSI minimise the noise and vibration (N&V) is by combining their numerical prediction and field expertise, leading to provide ’ground truth’ studies (real-world validation studies as numerical simulations are combined with with onsite measurement,” BV told Maritime Journal.

“When several studies are done within single problem-solving approaches BVS/TSI aim at having a holistic approach that ensures not only considering various technical aspects of N&V problems but also targeting being cost effective.

 “New technologies are being developed: TSI has built, for instance, an N&V monitoring expertise that completes perfectly BVS machinery (e.g. FMECA, CBM…) risk analyses. TSI has also developed onboard systems to capture the severity of propeller cavitation, hence giving the possibility of reducing it when appropriate or needed or simply triggering maintenance action when levels overtake admissible values. 

“As a conclusion, as far as the problem is understood and quantified accurately (the key purpose of associating prediction and measurements), an efficient and cost-effective remediation can be found. Alternatively, one could propose ambitious, heavy and costly insulation material without conducting more than a qualitative study, and so end up with a solution that would work but lead to far worse consequences (heavy insulation means more weight and space needed onboard).”

“We are delighted to have extended our collaboration with TSI – a company with 40 years’ experience in providing high-quality noise and vibration services for assets around the world,” said BV Solutions M&O president Paul Shrieve.

“But it is not just vessels that can be impacted. For offshore assets, vibration in rotating machinery or the asset structure itself can be very damaging to production performance and to offshore personnel.”