SHIPBOARD STOWAGE OF FLAMMABLE AND COMBUSTIBLE LIQUIDS

ABSTRACTThe uncontrolled proliferation of flammables and combustibles aboard ship, in addition to posing an obvious fire and explosive hazard, has seriously degraded the survivability and increased the vulnerability characteristics of U.S. Navy surface ships. This problem for the most part has been superficially attributed to a widespread shortage of flammable and combustible stowage capacity. As a result, current solutions have been limited to increasing stowage capacity through additional storerooms and development of more efficient stowage aids. Unfortunately, these solutions simply address the symptoms, are of a corrective nature, and do not eliminate the fundamental causes of the problem. The paper conducts a more systematic and comprehensive investigation into identifying and resolving the flammable liquids problem by considering it from a ship life cycle perspective. In this way, the problem is shown to be the resultant accumulation of a number of causes which occur during a ship's design, construction, and operational phases, and which collectively manifest themselves as a major shortage of flammable and combustible liquid stowage space aboard current fleet ships. Actions are then formulated to eliminate or counteract these fundamental causes, and validated by application to a hypothetical case study.