Design for Maintainability of a Research Vessel’s Engine Room

The Life Cycle Performance Assessment (LCPA) Tool developed by the authors was tested in the herein presented application case dealing with the “Design for Maintainability of a Research Vessel’s Engine Room”. In this relation, we further developed the methods for the estimation of the operational and maintenance costs of a Research Vessel, by using a structured and flexible tool capable of evaluating the investment, operational and maintenance costs for different engine room configurations and of identifying the best solution for elaboration at the design stage (design for maintainability). The engine room space optimisation and accessibility were also evaluated by use of a developed 3D digital mock-up, enabling the assessment of the potential impact on maintenance costs in relation to the clearance space around the machinery and their compliance with specific requirements. After a general introduction to the topic provided in Sect. 5.1 of the chapter, Sect. 5.2 describes the reference vessel used in this Application Case, with a focus on the main characteristics of the propulsion system and electric power generation. Section 5.3, besides an overviewof the standard maintenance techniques, describes the implementation of the Mean Time Between Maintenance (MTBM) in the LCPA tool, based on the best working point of an engine. Section 5.4 identifies the alternative solutions for the propulsion layout, proposed with respect to the base configuration, while analysing the obtained LCPA results in terms of economic and environmental Key Performance Indicators (KPIs).