Engineering Design Consultants

Macduff Ship Lift

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The Macduff Harbour Slipway lies on the North Aberdeenshire Coast and services the local fishing fleet with both ship building and repair facilities. Aberdeenshire Council were the client for the scheme and R J McLeod, the contractor. The ship lift consists of a single haulage carriage to carry any one of 4 traversing ships cradles.

The installed ship lift can accommodate a ship with a keel of 25 metres in length, a displacement 350 tonnes and a maximum beam 10 metres. In 2007, M G Bennett and Associates Ltd were engaged to produce the design of a new ship lift including:

	Structural design of the haulage and traversing carriages
	Mechanical design of the bilge beams to accommodate ships of different beams
	Production of manufacturing drawings
	Specification of hydraulic and control system
	Calculation package

The ship lift comprises of the following elements:

	A single haulage carriage to carry anyone of 4 traversing ships cradles
	The haulage carriage is hauled up and lowered down the slipway by a haulage winch
	A control cab is mounted on an elevated structure from the haulage carriage such that the operations can be controlled from the ship lift when the carriages are submerged. The control cab houses an auxiliary control station and the diesel driven hydraulic powerpack for the winch and stabiliser arms.
	Three styles of traversing cradle were designed to accommodate the fishing fleet's requirements with beam lying in the range 3.5metres to 10 metres. The ship yard has traversing rails that are at right angles to those of the ship lift. Hence having raised the boat out of the water, the traversing cradle complete with ship may be moved to a standing area.
	Each of the traversing carriages has two sets of stabiliser arms to hold the ship in a vertical attitude. Each pair of stabiliser arms may be moved individually or as a matched pair.
	For long term projects the ship may be supported on traditional keel blocks and the traversing carriage removed
	The design of the traversing carriage allows it to enter the boat building shed

The full system can be pendant controlled.