The Physics Of MV Ever Given

Roadkill 99 Comments

“I think that the Suez canal will be closed for some time going forward”

Sky News: 24-hour dredging and tugging as Egypt’s president mulls removing Ever Given containers

Monday morning update: “We can confirm movement of the Ever Given, it appears to be partially refloated, there is still some work to do until its completely freed, but progress has been made.”

99 Replies to “The Physics Of MV Ever Given”

  1. I guess if there were folks who wanted to put a HUGE wrench into Global Economy, they might pull something like this off now wouldn’t they…Nah…Would they.??

    As noted previously, emptying the fuel tanks might be the 1st thing they do ..? Mind you I imagine there’s a whole lot of physics involved in “lightening” said vessel.

    1. It is stuck in sand and with lots of water around it can be moved in a short time with high pressure water pumps it can be moved quickly. Lots of government workers with no brains making decisions making it impossible

  4. Use seismic charges to induce liquefaction in the sand around the bow, while pulling from the stern.

  7. They need to make use of liquefaction to reduce the friction. Some method of inducing vibration into the sand would dramatically change its property for the better. The effect can be seemingly out of preportion to the energy involved. So this might be practical.

    Didn’t see Edward Teach’s post :). Perhaps it is obvious as we both saw it quickly.

    1. Which begs the question in my mind (I’ve had this question for years) … what keeps the banks of this sand dug canal from continually sloughing-off into the canal. The moats I built around my sand castles as a youth usually collapsed the castle.

      The shoulders of the canal must be dug (and repose) at a very low angle … which suggests that a whole lot of that ship (both sides) is wedged into the banks.

    2. There would still be a few of Mr. Schlumberger’s seismic trucks in the Muddle East. Not as much fun as explosives, but “tunable” if what you want is “liquefaction”..

  8. Having had a few boating mishaps..Pulling from the land has always provided the best anchor point.
    Seems to me tension on the stern from across channel would do wonders with the rise and fall of the tide.

    Hell I think the Roman engineers could have salvaged this one.

    One way to lighten the ship,is write the cargo off,toss the containers ashore and ignore the looting.
    What is the cost analysis,for value of ships cargo versus cost of holding up trade?

    Longer I watch,the more I am convinced somebody wanted the canal blocked..

    However concerned citizens take note..”Its an accident”..
    Accidents are so convenient,imagine that as you observe a parasite motoring by you in a cute little virtue signalling package..
    Deviant Politicians crossing paths with a huge agriculture implement..
    Or taking what seems like a lifetime to overtake you on the highway.

    These are thoughts that do not keep me warm at night..yet.

    The safety mafia keep promoting their myth,that “There are no accidents”,as they sanctimoniously lecture those who work,while stealing enormous amounts of our time and money.
    Therefor,by these logic of these bureaucrats the Ever Given,cannot be an accident.
    For man controls the elements and can fore see all….Or so they would have us believe..

    I wonder what the proponents of “Just in time delivery” are preaching right now?
    They have been pushing that mantra for years,ignoring the obvious ,that shit happens,bragging up the “cost savings” ..So who pays now?
    Anyone got good information on a major train crash in Egypt,just hours after this “Stuck ship” saga began?
    Are the rails destroyed?
    Does that “crash” prevent equipment reaching the stranded vessel?
    Another good reason for Fortress North America.
    Forget Make America Great Again and an Independent Western Canada getting rich on their coattails..
    Natural borders clearly defined by cold hostile seas are much better all round.

    And the “Enemy Within,who we might have had to accommodate in an independent country,have clearly self identified and stated their malice ,intentions and determination.

    Don’t know about other folk,but when people call me nasty names and state that they want me and mine gone..I believe them.

    So in a desperate attempt to return to the actual topic,the odds of this shipping blockage being an accident are the same as that of the Wuhan Flu being natural.

    Is it really paranoia?
    When they really are out to manipulate you?

    1. Well … I’ve heard of another tp shortage arising from this accidental disaster. Has anyone checked the whereabouts of Sheryl Crow?

      1. How long is the chain on the port bow anchor?

        Get a piledriver in to bash several clusters of suitable and available pilings into the desert north-west of the bow (across the canal).

        A cluster of embedded pilings? Known in the trade as the “(Military) Engineers holdfast” the caps of the pilings are then linked together by heavy cable, welded beams, whatever it takes, and this forms a substantial anchor for a winching operation.

        All that is then required is a bunch of serious winches hooked to the ships anchor and a team of VERY co-ordinated engineers to apply steady tension to the cables. Military-spec tracked recovery vehicles fit the bill nicely. A bunch of BIG sheave blocks to add mechanical advantage and Heave, Ho! Add a crew on the east bank with serious fire-hoses to flush away sand around the bow. As I recall, the Egyptian military has some experience with high-pressure seawater and large amounts of sand.

    2. They travel in convoys with an Egyptian pilot on each ship, from what I understand. Pilot maybe the one one on the “wheel”, too. All the other ships ahead of this one mysteriously escaped the “wind” issue. Musta been a hell of a gust of wind that only affected this ship in the line. So why this ship? Steering malfunction? The helm goes hard over port or starboard usually and stopping 240,000 tonnes even at slow speed on a ship this size will take a week. Or the ”helmsman” had a heart attack, fell over the wheel (they use a joy stick now) and she took a short turn for worse. The response time for the rudder to “kick in” and move the ship is a hefty delay before you see the bow swinging. Nobody raised a warning in this controlled environment? Dropping the port hook probably wouldn’t do much on a ship this size. Inshallah.
      Nobody is talking for obvious reasons. Gotta get their stories straight, because we’re missing some important time issues here.

      1. Poor ole wind is getting the blame for lots of embarrassing incidents lately. At least it’s a little more specific than cLiMatE ChaNge

  10. How long does it take to put together a trebuchet? Why are they not unloading (into the desert) from 6 points on the ship already?

    1. Unloading with what?
      Can the average helicopter, or even the largest helicopter lift the average loaded container? How many of these choppers does Egypt have? How long to ship some helicopters to the site? Maybe large land-based cranes, but they take time to travel to the site too. Large maritime crane barges could do it but they need weeks to get shipped to the location.

  11. I’ve heard there are trained pilots required to navigate through the canal. If they’re like the local pilots, such mishaps can always be blamed on someone else.

  12. “So what is the solution? I don’t have the answer”

    Informative video, eh?

    Remove the containers? Question … how many helicopter trips will that take? I have little doubt they will have to remove containers… enough to restore SOME amount of buoyancy

    So … what agency is tasked with finding the REAL cause of the “loss of power” and wind pushing the vessel sideways? The Egyptians? Too bad the Brits weren’t still operating the canal. Yeah, yeah … that’s a “micro-aggression” against the dirty robe wearers, eh?

    1. Helicopters are not the answer. The helicopters with the biggest lifting capacity in the world are the Sikorsky Skycrane and the Mil Mi-26, both rated for 10 tons. Some of these containers can be over 30 tons.

      1. Well … that pretty much leaves only blowing them up in place, eh? What other piece of equipment can access the top of this stack (and lift 30tons) from the water or shore … what has that reach and cantilever strength?

        I doubt any nautical designer EVER took a mid-water unstacking of containers into consideration when designing these mega-vessels. In the same way no building designer takes into consideration a fully loaded (with fuel) airliner smashing into a high rise building.

  13. Don’t captains give up the helm to professional captains that work for whatever canal system they enter?
    Secondly……

    1. Yes. But I don’t know the rules for Suez. There are 3 watches, 1 watch officer per watch, normally, plus a Chief Officer (maybe) and a Captain. I would expect if no Chief Officer the Captain is on the bridge as well as the Standard officer on watch, plus helmsman. With joy stick “wheels” they probably don’t have the “helmsman” anymore, as anywhere on the open sea you’re on auto pilot. Ship steers it self. Less crew = less cost. The Pilot has the helm in the canal I expect, with a ship’s watch officer keeping an eye on things.
      My take, rudder/control failure and speaking publicly might impact the insurance issue. Deliberate? The time it takes for the rudder to kick in before the ship actually moves is enough that “deliberate” can be corrected. But then that’s just my take. Anyone got anything different?

      1. If they had a mechanical problem that caused them to lose steering it would not take much time for a huge, heavy, long ship in a shallow, narrow channel to hit the bank (seconds, certainly less than a minute).

  14. The cost of the ship and it’s freight versus the money being lost from having it blocking the canal.
    Start from there.

  15. Have they tried putting it in reverse and turning the wheel and then putting it in forward and turning the wheel the other way and then putting it in reverse again turning the wheel back the opposite direction and then…

    “Paging Mohamad Powers”

  16. The math in this video is incorrect as it doesn’t take into account the buoyant force of the water still being displaced by the hull, plus he uses dead weight tonnage, not displacement tonnage. However, by accident he comes to the correct number. Looking at the photos of the stuck ship it appears the vertical distance of the black portion of the hull (18.4 m according to Wikipedia) is about 4 times the exposed portion of the red part of the hull at the bow, meaning that the loaded 14.5 m of draft has lost a little less than 5 m at the bow. We don’t know if the ship was loaded to it’s full draft, but assuming it was it, and also assuming the stern is at full draft, and assuming that plan view area of the hull is roughly the same from the draft line to bottom of the hull (not true, but what else can we do), the calculation is 220,000 tonnes displacement * 4.5 m lost vertical displacement at bow / 14.5 full displacement * 50 % (stern is at full draft) = 34,000 tonnes weight on the sand at the bow.

    1. My mistake, his 33,000 tonnes is the pulling force, not the weight on the bow, in fact he’s quite wrong, assuming the coefficient of friction is 50% the pulling force is 17,000 tonnes, although this number should be in Newtons not tonnes as tonnes is mass, but no matter he’s about 100% too high.

    2. The forces required to pull that load make it unlikely to utilize cables, winches, shackles, purchase blocks, and structural fastening points on the ship with the capacity to handle such forces. Perhaps it’s feasible in conjunction with liquefaction under the bow as discussed above.

      1. John, my exact thoughts, but do they have the charges to use to liquefy with, we may come up with dozens of answers, but they may be impossible to execute due to “supplies or equipment ” not at hand!

        1. Perhaps temporarily mounting (welded on platforms) vibratory equipment (eg. a highway compactor) on the hull at the bow (or maybe on the sand as close as possible) at the same time using large high pressure hoses to blast away under the nose while pulling from the stern?

  17. So it can’t be pulled from shore? I’m no engineer, but it would seem logical to sink some pilings on land and use that to winch the ship.

    1. My basic understanding is the attachment points onboard wouldnt survive the forces needed to pull it off. Doesnt sound right, but obviously I am not an engineer.

    2. As an amateur carpenter, who has had many a long, unstraight, board to install … nothing works other than a wedge leveraging against a stronger structure than the bowed force of the wood. I like your idea. However, I expect it would take quite a cluster of pilings. But, I expect pilings (perhaps a grid of interlocking sheet steel pilings) could do the trick. And they should go easily into that water/sand environment.

  18. The Suez Canal was blocked for eight years by the Egyptians, just to spite the Jews, who had won it in war fair and square and by rights should be running it to this day—had the globalists not continued to deny the right of the Jews to exist, never mind prosper in the land of Israel.

    We’ll manage.

    If this makes garbage made in China more expensive and forces people to buy at home, so much the better.

    1. Have you tried buying anything made at home lately? We bailed on manufacturing here in Canada when Mo Strong made the first deal with China. The Americans followed suit shortly thereafter. Trump was starting back on the road to American know how and ingenuity, and he was torpedoed. So good luck with buying locally.

      As mentioned above trying to get a ship of that sized moved by a tug in a limited environment is a fools folly. Off load the cargo by by Sikorsky, off load the fuel by fuel barge, and connect by tow lines to however many Komatsu D575A’s that are required and pull the plug out of the bottle. Rocket science it ain’t.

  19. Given the President Of The United States Of America blown off his feet three times at Joint Airforce Base Andrews in Maryland on March 19 @ 12:22 pm and the SS Everclear blown ashore March 23 at 5 am and the distance from Andrews Joint Airforce Base to the Suez Cannel is 5,841 miles calculate wind speed.

  21. Just a few comments. I’m not sure how effectively this ship (monstrosity really) could be piloted. Can anyone see the bridge over the containers? I can’t. If the bridge is barely visible, what can be seen from that vantage? That and given the windage from the multitude of stacked containers, I can see how high winds may have been a cause. This would be compounded by suction if it neared the shore (the bank effect).

    I was listening to a salvage expert this morning on TV (he was partly responsible for the salvage of the Costa Concordia so he knows what he’s talking about). regarding removing containers: this ship is so large there are only perhaps a half dozen ports world wide where the Ever Given could dock alongside for unloading. While possible here, it would be very difficult and time consuming. Then there is the possibility of structural failure of the ship. This large a ship has been designed to accommodate some flexing during voyages but given the stresses imposed by grounding, dredging and tides, there is the possibility of failure.

  22. If it’s being blamed on a wind gust we might apply he adage “it’s an ill wind that blows nobody good”.

  23. Coffee!

    FYI/FYA a whole bunch of the world’s coffee goes through the Sewer canal!

    I saw there might be a shortage!

  24. My basic understanding is the attachment points onboard wouldnt survive the forces needed to pull it off. Doesnt sound right, but obviously I am not an engineer.

  25. Go big on the fail, like Exxon Valdez.
    Maybe all those Santa/Satan shoes are onboard?
    Like Covid, the experts are in charge.

    1. Balloons! Lots and lots of balloons. Hey, works for Wiley E. Coyote….. sort of.

  26. How much buoyancy could move this thing just enough? Could a VERY large helium blimp/balloon help?

    1. Theoretically.
      According some quick, back-of-the-envelope calculations you’d be looking at a blimp that is about 10-20km long with a 2km diameter. If you gave someone a couple billion dollars and a decade you might be able to build and test one.

    1. This looks like a viable solution to me. Assuming it is all just sand.
      I find it hard to believe that a canal like that could be dug, and survive kist being dug directly into sand.

    2. DJ, water jet at about 1, 000 psi, run by a big diesel, could do a lot,but is there one available?

  30. I’m no captain, but it seems improbable to me that wind did this.

    Only racism or global warming could have caused this (maybe both).

  33. OK, lots of great comments and some good engineering thoughts. I’m also not an engineer, but have worked around heavy industrial places most of my life, and before that I was in the merchant Marine for several years. I’ve been through the Panama a few times, but the Suez was shut down for most of the time I was a sailor due the the war, and the ships blocking that canal.

    My immediate thoughts upon the initial news announcements were as follows.
    The giant penis route that ship took on the GPS picture before entering that canal was a give away. No self respecting captain or ships officer would do that unless they are either suicidal, want to end their career, mentally unstable, or perhaps have been paid to do this, or, are perhaps of the religion of peace persuasion. (ROP) Considering the local area, I’m sure there are lots of the ROP types around. There is also the middle finger at the west by these types or the Chinese CCP. This will screw up commerce to the west big time, and just what a hostile nation or ROP would want. Not as dramatic as flying an aircraft through a high rise building but equally as devastating economically, so my money is on either the CCP or an ROP action. I don’t believe this was an accident or wind. you would need an immediate hurricane to affect such a large heavy vessel so quickly, and if there were heavy winds that vessel and others would be either anchored or tied up at a holding dock, waiting out the weather. This was deliberate, and at a very good place for maximum difficulty with virtually no infrastructure or docking facilities close by.

    OK, that said, the suggestions of using a Sikorsky is impossible. Lifting three times max capacity from an unstable base, multiple/hundreds of times with a flying craft above such superstructure and other impediments would be suicide for the pilots as well. Getting it unloaded in a conventional manor is also almost impossible, again unloading onto a barge that can only get to one side without suitable offloading equipment aboard or even available is also a slow to non starter. Some of the best suggestions on this thread was the liquifaction idea, or to sink a pylon or a series of pylons into the ground on the banks, (both sides, well back from the canal, and winching it off of the grounding area with heavy and multiple equipment. Yes, the suitability of winching from ship attachments would be problematic as the ships overall weight and size will cause the attachment points to be ripped off, assuming the winching cables don’t self destruct first. They might, might, be able to sling multiple heavy cables around the whole exterior of the vessel to spread the load around the hull. No guarantees, and it will take time, but none of it will be easy. Who ever thought this interruption up, will be very pleased with himself.

    As to pilots, yes two, although in the Panama, the ships helmsman was utilized, the pilots only gave directions, and is in command of the ship, over even the captain. I don’t know if these Suez pilots would steer these ships because even these huge vessels will have their own quirks just like a car has, and a familiar helmsman would be more sensible. Again, this is the middle east so who knows. As to steering, there is not enough canal to get such a large ship to get into a heavy unstoppable swing, before it would have collided with the bank. However, if traveling at full speed (unlikely) it would take a good while to slow down and stop or travel astern. I respectfully suggest this was steered into the bank deliberately, and the forward ship motion caused it to swing out into, and then block, the channel at the most inconvenient spot possible. As to comments about the bridge view being semi blind, these ships and crews are looking for problems in the distance, and also would have lookouts on each side of the bridge, and if required, at the port and starboard bows, plus short and long distance radar would be operating. Timing is a consideration as well. The early morning collision would be beneficial, as most of the crew would be still sleeping, and even the operating officers, helmsman, lookouts and pilots would have been at their lowest efficiency function wise. If one of the pilots were a ROP, or a Jihadi, or paid to misbehave, this would also have been his best time to act. By the time others became aware of what was happening in that narrow channel, it would have been too late to stop it. OK, that’s my ten cents worth.

    1. Certainly is very suspicious with this fully loaded and oversized monstrosity plugged this and any wrong attempts could sink it.
      Wanting to damage US major trade corridor that could take months or years to fix should this sink.

      1. It reeks of the EVIL, yet deadly, diabolically clever, plan to take down the WTC. However!? Does anyone believe the TRUTH would ever be told? There has been a rush to hush-up any ROP mayhem for years now. Pilots slamming airliners into mountainsides … or gone missing completely … have all been determined to have “girlfriend problems”, “money problems”, or just the catch-all “mental illness”.

        GerryK … question: I saw the penis-pattern and kind of shrugged. It seemed plausible that this could have long term movements in the forebay to reposition and avoid traffic? Any chance these movements were legit? Seems I recall a US Navy ship making similar movements in Singapore Harbor before crashing.

      2. This is more a European corridor than a US one, since the US ships go the other direction…. although it does include oil tanker traffic including those headed to our refineries on the east coast…. expect an extra increase in oil prices

        1. Oil, not so much. Maybe a couple of weeks of high oil prices, until regular, around-the-Cape (South Africa) service is resumed. This is much worse for the Europe-Asia merchandise trade.

    2. The giant penis route that ship took on the GPS picture before entering that canal was a give away. No self respecting captain or ships officer would do that

      A merchant mariner over at Ace HQ said that drawing dicks on the GPS is very common when freighters are stuck on station waiting for a transit.

      We’ve seen military fighter pilots do it with contrails, and private pilots do it all the time.

  34. It is worth considering that if this was still being run by the people that built it, it is likely that there would be a double channel all the way, and that the existing channels would be much wider now to accommodate today’s ships.

  35. I wonder if anyone’s thought of building a temporary “backyard” swimming pool around the beached ship? If the water level in the immediate area surrounding the vessel is increased even a meter or so the ship’s bow will rise UP from it’s entrenched sticking points and allow much more easier extraction. The canal appears to be less than 1000ft across and roughly 15m deep so something cheap and simple could be engineered to do that. It just depends on what’s available. There’s floating bridges, drill pipe, 1000ft+ long rolls of heavy vinyl tarp, steel cable, big ass portable water pumps…whatever it takes to rig something up. It’s not rocket science.

  37. Me, personally? I would have started removing containers the first hour. Helicopter, crane, whatever method, removing weight makes everything else easier. Temporary staging area, line of 20,000 trucks, whatever.

    What is the difference between the loaded, and unloaded water line? 15 feet? 30 feet?

    All the fools up thread; “I am not an engineer, but [this], [this], [that] all impossible based on my decades of not an engineer experience cat fish farming in the vicinity of industry”.

    I also am not an engineer, but this is pretty clearly simply a problem of time. You can start removing the containers, start making the ship lighter, and get that done in the month or 2 it will take. Or, you can dick around for an entire year, and then start removing the containers which will still take a month or 2 regardless of when you start.

    When your grain truck gets stuck filling the disker, step one is get another truck, and unload the stuck truck. When your dump truck gets stuck at the dump, you dump the load where you are, and then get unstuck. When your flat deck gets stuck delivering the D8 Cat to that remote site, you drive the Cat off the flat deck, and then work on pulling the truck out.

    When you run a ship aground? Why, you leave all the weight you can on the ship (maybe bring additional load in will help!), and speculate about infeasible solutions for 5 months before you just start removing the containers, like you should have started doing day one.

    It does not matter if it was accidental, deliberate. What matters is:
    Do you want the canal clear?
    What are the options?
    How long will that take?
    How much will that cost?

    1. My immediate thoughts were the same. This vessel will have to be unloaded and they might as well get started right away. I’m sure, however, that unloading it will not be a simple procedure for all the reasons listed above.

    2. kevin not an engineer, unload? pray tell how, as there are not options available, if you have been keeping up. And if you unload haphazardly you could make things worst!

    3. The lowest tech solution for removing the containers:
      pitch them over the side.

      The containers were loaded, based on a documented plan. The containers were to be unloaded, based on a documented plan. So, build a ramp, tip the first container off. Move to container 2, pitch that container off.

      There are trucks, bulldozers, whatever at the bottom of the makeshift slide/temporary ramp. Remove 2, 3 4, whatever containers an hour, work 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Slow and steady, the job gets done.

      1. What would you use to tip a 30,000lb container? Crane? Helicopter? Do you build your ramp to one spot next to the hull? How big of a crane can you park on a temporary ramp? Or do you build a gigantic 400m-wide ramp to access the entire ship. What do you build your ramp from? Soil? Sand? Don’t forget: the ramp has to essentially hold the weight of a loaded tractor-trailer unit plus whatever size crane. It would take months to build this temporary 75-foot-tall, many-hundred-foot-long ramp. It takes weeks to get cranes of a suitable size to the site. I don’t think any helicopter exists with the capacity to lift a loaded container (if there are, it will take weeks to get them on site).

  39. Just checked the news. They have already started what they call “lightering” the Ever Given; removing the containers. They estimate it will take removal of at least one quarter of the containers, and they are talking days. I was guessing weeks to months. The crane to do it should already be there, based on a story dated yesterday.

  40. Big deal. The world survived the Canal being blocked for more than six years, 1967-1974.

  43. I’m interested in the contents of the containers. There are dark rumours it’s part of the child smuggling operation. If true, the kids need immediate rescuing and the owners of the load tried at Nuremberg.

  45. “24-hour dredging and tugging”

    If only Jack Layton was still around. He knew all the best tuggers and dredgers.

    Those suckers were awesome.

  46. Ok, I think I have it. You take a MOAB – no hear me out – and you explode it in the canal a few hundred yards back in the direction the container ship came from. The resulting wave will push the ship in the direction of travel, but more importantly it will lift the ship from the sand. The stern of the ship would be firmly anchored so the front could pivot free and the wave would not drive the rear of the ship into the bank. Super strong tugs would already be applying a pulling force on the side of the ship away from the wave with cables.
    The ship and it’s cargo are saved and you get to use a sh*t ton of high explosives.
    Happiness all around.

    1. You dont need a MOAB. A series of charges placed along the length of the canal could be detonated in sequence like is done in a railgun. If the timing of detonations and placement of the charges are correct the same size wave could be created with much less destruction to the canal. I’m not saying the basic idea is sound.

  47. If you show the ship a picture of Elizabeth May its “bulbous bow” its “purple plum” will quickly shrivel and retract from the hole it’s in.

    1. Yeah, looks like it.

      What do we know?

      Container ships are commonly loaded.
      Container ships are commonly unloaded.
      Canals have been blocked before.
      Canals have been unblocked before.
      This is not the first accident in the Suez.
      Ships have been damaged before.
      Ships have been repaired at sea before.
      Ships have run aground before.

      Nothing about this is a brand new never before seen problem. Simple matter of time and cost. Looks like they are simply going by the actuarial tables.

      Some ships have already started on the long way around Some are waiting in line . Everyone has crunched their own numbers, and cone to their own conclusions.

    1. A rising tide lifts all boats. Right? Thank you, moon!

      Now, the inquiry phase starts? Yeah … right …

Proudly powered by WordPress & Skyrocket Themes

MENU

Navigation