Structural Development of LNG Fueled Large Container Ship

There is a growing interest in the appearance of LNG fueled large commercial ship with rising oil price and stronger emission regulation of these days. Though small or middle size LNG fueled vessels have been already operated, the application of LNG fuel to large commercial vessels is now under developing in stage. LNG fueled propulsion system can be characterized by three differences than typical propulsion system. First one is 2-stroke dual fuel engine, second one is high pressure fuel supply system and the third is LNG fuel tank. Among these three components, this paper is focused on the LNG fuel tank which was developed by DSME so called ‘ACT-iB’ (ACT-iB: Aluminum Cargo Tank Independent type B). This paper describes engineering works such as structural analysis, crack propagation & leakage analysis and temperature distribution analysis for the application of ACT-iB to LNG fueled vessel. From this development, it was concluded that LNG fueled technologies are ready to large container ship application in structural point of view.