June 5 - Rotterdam based shipping company Rotortug and ASD Ship Design from Alblasserdam, The Netherlands have invented a revolutionary tugboat technology to prevent towline failures from chafing against a tugboat's fixed towing point.
The azimuth friction-free towing point was revealed at the 22nd International Tug, Salvage and OSV (ITS) convention in Barcelona, Spain.
Conventional towing point designs are usually fixed bitts fitted with polished and stainless steel cladding in line contact areas guiding a towline to a towing winch. Using state of the art towing winches, towlines are winched in and out automatically by using a pre-set line force to prevent both dynamic overloads and slack wires. Synthetic towlines can easily fail due to chafing and friction with increased risks for safety.
Rotortug and ASD Ship Design worked with Ridderinkhof in Hasselt, The Netherlands to develop a rotating wheel construction to guide the towline without friction.
ASD Ship Design develops and designs new types of ships for ship owners. In recent years ASD Ship Design has been involved in the design of over 30 new types of ships.
