Hydrex Repairs Tanker’s Propeller in Dubai
Hydrex mobilized an emergency team to Dubai to perform underwater inspection and repair on a 184-meter chemical tanker after it hit a buoy.
After the equipment arrived at the vessel’s location the team started the operation with an underwater survey of the ship. The inspection revealed that only a single blade of the propeller had been damaged. Because the damage to the blade was minimal only a small part of the blade needed to be cropped.
The team used the information acquired during the inspection to calculate and determine the correct measurements needed to modify the tip of the propeller blade. The divers cropped the blade and ground its edge to give it the correct radius and shape. Additionally, some small nicks and cracks along the trailing edge were also repaired.
When the cropping was complete, the Hydrex technicians polished the blade to make sure that any remaining loss of efficiency would be minimal. No rebalancing of the propeller would be needed in this case as the part of the blade that was removed was within the acceptable range.
The operation took less than a day and the ship could keep its schedule instead of having to go off-hire.
