Hanwha Ocean Receives Approval for Advanced Hull Monitoring System

South Korea’s Hanwha Ocean has secured approval in principle (AIP) from the American Bureau of Shipping (ABS) for its innovative hull monitoring system. The ABS SMART structural health monitoring (SHM) Tier 3 certification recognizes Hanwha Ocean’s system for its use of hull sensors and advanced algorithms to provide critical structural health insights, even in areas without sensors.

The system, designed by Hanwha Ocean, is aimed at estimating structural damage to ships and offshore assets during operations, enabling optimal maintenance planning to ensure safety. With the increasing demand for digital technologies in the shipping industry, Hanwha Ocean’s Chief Technology Officer, Young Chang Shon, emphasized the importance of proactively responding to this trend.

The AIP is a significant outcome of the technology collaboration agreement signed between Hanwha Ocean and ABS in September 2024. This partnership focuses on technology development in digitalization, artificial intelligence, cybersecurity operations, and sustainability.

ABS Senior Vice President and Chief Technology Officer, Patrick Ryan, commended the achievement, highlighting the importance of safety at sea and the transformative capabilities of smart technologies in the maritime and offshore sectors.

Recently, Hanwha Ocean held a naming ceremony for its seventh-generation drillship, Tidal Action, in collaboration with Constellation Oil Services and Petrobras. The drillship will operate in the Campos Basin offshore Brazil for Petrobras.

In a separate development, ABS and another classification society, Bureau Veritas (BV), granted AIP for the preliminary front-end engineering design (pre-FEED) of a standard floating production storage and offloading (FPSO) facility concept by Hanwha Ocean. The FPSO unit is designed to have a daily crude oil production capacity of 190,000 barrels and storage for 2.38 million barrels of crude oil, aiming to enhance competitiveness through shorter construction periods and reduced costs.