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Samsung Heavy Industries held a christening ceremony on June 22 for a 9,600 TEU container ship and handed it over to Chinas CGS, the ship owner. This container ship is the largest ever to be built in the world. SHI had already built the worlds largest container ship in July 2005, and it's been only a year for the shipbuilder to renew this record. SHI was thus able to prove its worlds top technological capability in the construction of large container ship.
This ship is 321 meters long and 46 meters wide. It can carry as many as 9,600 20feet container ships. The weight of this volume is equivalent to 1.3 million 29 inch color TVs, or 50 million mobile phones. The ship was named Xin Los Angeles. This container ship is different from the existing container ships in that it was built to minimize the vibration of the ship. The structural safety was also strengthened. It was environment friendly designed, while maximizing the economic feasibility. In short, safety and operation efficiency were taken into account in the construction. To be more specific, the angle of the propellers tip was controlled so that the pressure on the ship could be reduced by as much as 20%. In addition, the safety of the head and stern of the ship was strengthened. Construction also aimed at minimizing the emission of nitrogen oxide by using environment friendly engine. It can also run at a 26&min;note speed by using the engine that is used in 7,000 TEU container ships. The history of SHIs large container ship construction traces back to 1999. SHI had built a 6,200 TEU container ship for the first time in the world in 1999. Back then, the major container ships that were made were 5,000 TEU ships. Since then, SHI has developed 7,700 TEU container ships, 8,000 TEU ships, and 9,600 TEU ships. In 2004, it developed a 12,000 TEU container ship for the first time in the global shipbuilding industry. SHI has been able to double the size of the container ship in only seven years. SHI was able to emerge as the top container ship constructor on the back of timely investment as well as research and development. The construction of a towing tank in the Daeduck Ship Research Center in 1997 is a representative example. SHI promoted a testing making a model ship run through an artificial wave. Then it measured and analyzed the operation state of the ship by using high tech equipments. As such, SHI was able to develop efficiently running container ships on the back of research infrastructure. In short, it made it possible for the ship to carry more containers and run at the same speed as existing ships. SHI has so far built some 181 container ships, while receiving orders for 33 ships out of the 9,000 TEU plus container ship orders received in the global shipbuilding industry, thereby taking up 45% market share. "They key technology in container ship construction is to carry more containers under the same conditions. We have already developed 12,000 TEU container ships, and are trying to get new orders for these ships. At the same time, we will continue to focus on research and development, so as to steadily maintain our number one position in the world shipbuilding industry," CEO Kim Jing Wan said.
Source: Press Release
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