The Impact of Implementing the International Convention on the Control of Harmful Anti-fouling Systems in Ships （AFS Convention） on the Marine Environment

Marine fouling is the settlement and growth of a variety of marine organisms, such as bacteria, diatoms, protozoa and algae spores on structures immersed in seawater, such as ship＇s hulls, navigation buoys, and sonar equipment. Anti-fouling refers to material or systems used to prevent the accumulation of biological material on submerged surfaces. Bio-fouling results in higher fuel consumption and can also facilitate the transport of harmful NIS （Non-Indigenous Species）. Antifouling technologies incorporating biocides （e.g., Tributyltin） have been developed to prevent fouling. Their widespread use, however, raised concerns about their toxic effects on marine communities. The AFS Convention （International Convention on the Control of Harmful Anti-fouling Systems in Ships） is a 2001 IMO （International Maritime Organization） treaty, whereby states agree to ban the use of harmful anti-fouling paints and other anti-fouling systems that contain harmful substances. Particularly, the use of the organotinTributyltin is prohibited, since leaching of that chemical from the hulls of ships has been shown to cause deleterious effects on some sea creatures. Although the AFS Convention has entered into force, its full implementation has not yet been appropriately achieved. Most of the ratifying States have delegated the Classification Society to inspect their ships to ensure the implementation of the provisions of the Convention. Since painting ships takes place in dry docks, the full control falls in the hands of Classification Societies.

Fabrication of SPES/Nano-TiO_2 Composite Ultrafiltration Membrane and Its Anti-fouling Mechanism

Membrane fouling is one of the major obstacles for reaching a high flux over a prolonged period of ultrafiltration（UF）process.In this study,a sulfonated-polyethersulfone（SPES）/nano-TiO2 composite UF membrane with good anti-fouling performance was fabricated by phase inversion and self-assembly methods.The TiO2 nanoparticle self-assembly on the SPES membrane surface was confirmed by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy （XPS）and FT-IR spectrometer.The morphology and hydrophilicity were characterized by scanning electron microscopy（SEM）,atomic force microscopy（AFM）and contact angle goniometer,respectively.The anti-fouling mechanism of composite UF membrane was discussed through the analysis of the micro-structure and component of UF membrane surface.The results showed that the TiO2 content and the micro-structure of the composite UF membrane surface had great influence on the separation and anti-fouling performance.

Fabrication of magnetically responsive anti-fouling and easy-cleaning nanofiber membrane and its application for efficient oil-water emulsion separation

The magnetically responsive anti-fouling nanofiber membrane(MRANM)was fabricated for efficient oilwater emulsion separation,which could be cleaned using oscillating magnetic field.MRANM was prepared by grafting superparamagnetic Fe_(3)O_(4) nanoparticles onto the surface of electrospun polyacrylonitrile nanofiber membrane(PANM).Compared with PANM,the water contact angle of MRANM decreased from 104°to 0°,indicating that the hydrophilicity of the membrane was significantly improved.For the emulsions of hexadecane,octane and rapeseed oil,the separation efficiency was 98.04%,96.59%and 92.67%,respectively.After the treatments in oscillating magnetic field,the separation efficiency kept above 95%after 8 times recycling,which indicated that the MRANM had good regenerability and reusability.The as-fabricated membrane with magnetic responsiveness facilitated an effective method for solving the membrane fouling problem during practical applications of separation high viscosity oil-water emulsion.

Porous polybenzimidazole membranes with positive charges enable an excellent anti-fouling ability for vanadium-methylene blue flow battery

A cost-effective, high-performance and highly stable membrane has always been in intensively needed in aqueous organic-based flow batteries. Here we present a porous polybenzimidazole(PBI) membrane with positive charges that endow the membrane with a high rejection and an excellent anti-fouling ability for target organic molecule and asymmetric structure that affords a high conductivity for vanadiummethylene blue flow battery(V-MB FB). The morphologies and thickness of separating layer in particular of the porous PBI can be well adjusted by simply altering the polymer concentration in the cast solution and further afford the membrane with a controllable property in terms of both ion selectivity and ion conductivity. As a result, a V-MB FB assembled with a porous PBI membrane delivers a coulombic efficiency(CE) of 99.45% and an energy efficiency(EE) of 86.10% at a current density of 40 mA cm^(-2), which is 12% higher than that afforded by a Nafion 212 membrane. Most importantly, the V-MB FB demonstrates a methylene blue(MB) utilization of 97.55% at a theoretical capacity of 32.16 Ah L^(-1)(based on the concentration of MB in the electrolyte) because of the high ion conductivity of the membrane, which favors reducing the cost of a battery. The results suggest that the designed porous PBI membranes exhibit a very promising prospect for methylene blue-vanadium flow battery.

Electromagnetic anti-fouling technology for prevention of scale

An electromagnetic anti-fouling technology(EAFT) was developed further. The operating principle of the EAFT was presented using fundamental physics laws. To validate the effect of EAFT and identify the mechanism, a circulating flow setup was built. A series of fouling tests were carried out with and without EAFT, measuring fouling thermal resistance as function of time, making scanning electron microscope images and analyzing the particles size distribution in solution by dynamics light scattering technology. The main results were as follows: 1) All the precipitated crystals in solution were calcite and there were little differences between with EAFT and without EAFT in the experimental range. 2) The number of precipitate nucleation in solution was small and the particle growth was slow without EAFT. In opposition to the case untreated, a rapid particle growth was observed and the number of nucleation was expected to be large, due to the fact that the EAFT effectively increases the ions and crystals collision frequency and effectiveness by utilizing the induced electric field. It is indicated that the particle growth is promoted mainly by coagulation process but not nucleation growth. 3) The EAFT could prolong the delay time of fouling greatly, and after the delay time, the thermal resistance quickly increased. Therefore, in order to mitigate scale significantly, the floccules in solution should be deposited beforehand in a low-lying area of the exchangers and let off in time.

Ship-YOLOv8:一种轻量级高分辨遥感图像船舶细粒度检测算法

针对高分辨率影像的船舶细粒度目标检测分类任务中类内差异大、类间相似性高、物体和场景的尺度变化范围大、特征提取困难、样本小等特点,提出了一种基于YOLOv8为基础的改进算法。首先,在骨干网络中引入SimAM注意力机制,使得模型在复杂背景中更加聚焦船舶对象;其次,在颈部引入SPD-Conv模块,改善复杂背景下船舶尺度变化大和小目标检测的问题;最后针对细粒度船舶目标检测的特点,替换Mish激活函数和Focal-Loss损失函数,加快模型收敛,提高模型精度。经对比实验可知,改进的算法在保证检测速度和模型参数量的同时,在FAIR1M_Ship数据集取得了94.49%的检测精度,与目前流行的目标检测算法相比,在检测精度上有一定的提升。

Unmanned Ship Identification Based on Improved YOLOv8s Algorithm

Aiming at defects such as low contrast in infrared ship images,uneven distribution of ship size,and lack of texture details,which will lead to unmanned ship leakage misdetection and slow detection,this paper proposes an infrared ship detection model based on the improved YOLOv8 algorithm(R_YOLO).The algorithm incorporates the Efficient Multi-Scale Attention mechanism(EMA),the efficient Reparameterized Generalized-feature extraction module(CSPStage),the small target detection header,the Repulsion Loss function,and the context aggregation block(CABlock),which are designed to improve the model’s ability to detect targets at multiple scales and the speed of model inference.The algorithm is validated in detail on two vessel datasets.The comprehensive experimental results demonstrate that,in the infrared dataset,the YOLOv8s algorithm exhibits improvements in various performance metrics.Specifically,compared to the baseline algorithm,there is a 3.1%increase in mean average precision at a threshold of 0.5(mAP(0.5)),a 5.4%increase in recall rate,and a 2.2%increase in mAP(0.5:0.95).Simultaneously,while less than 5 times parameters,the mAP(0.5)and frames per second(FPS)exhibit an increase of 1.7%and more than 3 times,respectively,compared to the CAA_YOLO algorithm.Finally,the evaluation indexes on the visible light data set have shown an average improvement of 4.5%.

Efficient Ship:A Hybrid Deep Learning Framework for Ship Detection in the River

Optical image-based ship detection can ensure the safety of ships and promote the orderly management of ships in offshore waters.Current deep learning researches on optical image-based ship detection mainly focus on improving one-stage detectors for real-time ship detection but sacrifices the accuracy of detection.To solve this problem,we present a hybrid ship detection framework which is named EfficientShip in this paper.The core parts of the EfficientShip are DLA-backboned object location(DBOL)and CascadeRCNN-guided object classification(CROC).The DBOL is responsible for finding potential ship objects,and the CROC is used to categorize the potential ship objects.We also design a pixel-spatial-level data augmentation(PSDA)to reduce the risk of detection model overfitting.We compare the proposed EfficientShip with state-of-the-art(SOTA)literature on a ship detection dataset called Seaships.Experiments show our ship detection framework achieves a result of 99.63%(mAP)at 45 fps,which is much better than 8 SOTA approaches on detection accuracy and can also meet the requirements of real-time application scenarios.

Fine-Grained Ship Recognition Based on Visible and Near-Infrared Multimodal Remote Sensing Images: Dataset,Methodology and Evaluation

Fine-grained recognition of ships based on remote sensing images is crucial to safeguarding maritime rights and interests and maintaining national security.Currently,with the emergence of massive high-resolution multi-modality images,the use of multi-modality images for fine-grained recognition has become a promising technology.Fine-grained recognition of multi-modality images imposes higher requirements on the dataset samples.The key to the problem is how to extract and fuse the complementary features of multi-modality images to obtain more discriminative fusion features.The attention mechanism helps the model to pinpoint the key information in the image,resulting in a significant improvement in the model’s performance.In this paper,a dataset for fine-grained recognition of ships based on visible and near-infrared multi-modality remote sensing images has been proposed first,named Dataset for Multimodal Fine-grained Recognition of Ships(DMFGRS).It includes 1,635 pairs of visible and near-infrared remote sensing images divided into 20 categories,collated from digital orthophotos model provided by commercial remote sensing satellites.DMFGRS provides two types of annotation format files,as well as segmentation mask images corresponding to the ship targets.Then,a Multimodal Information Cross-Enhancement Network(MICE-Net)fusing features of visible and near-infrared remote sensing images,has been proposed.In the network,a dual-branch feature extraction and fusion module has been designed to obtain more expressive features.The Feature Cross Enhancement Module(FCEM)achieves the fusion enhancement of the two modal features by making the channel attention and spatial attention work cross-functionally on the feature map.A benchmark is established by evaluating state-of-the-art object recognition algorithms on DMFGRS.MICE-Net conducted experiments on DMFGRS,and the precision,recall,mAP0.5 and mAP0.5:0.95 reached 87%,77.1%,83.8%and 63.9%,respectively.Extensive experiments demonstrate that the proposed MICE-Net has more excellent performance on DMFGRS.Built on lightweight network YOLO,the model has excellent generalizability,and thus has good potential for application in real-life scenarios.

SAR-LtYOLOv8:A Lightweight YOLOv8 Model for Small Object Detection in SAR Ship Images

The high coverage and all-weather capabilities of Synthetic Aperture Radar(SAR)image ship detection make it a widely accepted method for maritime ship positioning and identification.However,SAR ship detection faces challenges such as indistinct ship contours,low resolution,multi-scale features,noise,and complex background interference.This paper proposes a lightweight YOLOv8 model for small object detection in SAR ship images,incorporating key structures to enhance performance.The YOLOv8 backbone is replaced by the Slim Backbone(SB),and the Delete Medium-sized Detection Head(DMDH)structure is eliminated to concentrate on shallow features.Dynamically adjusting the convolution kernel weights of the Omni-Dimensional Dynamic Convolution(ODConv)module can result in a reduction in computation and enhanced accuracy.Adjusting the model’s receptive field is done by the Large Selective Kernel Network(LSKNet)module,which captures shallow features.Additionally,a Multi-scale Spatial-Channel Attention(MSCA)module addresses multi-scale ship feature differences,enhancing feature fusion and local region focus.Experimental results on the HRSID and SSDD datasets demonstrate the model’s effectiveness,with a 67.8%reduction in parameters,a 3.4%improvement in AP(average precision)@0.5,and a 5.4%improvement in AP@0.5:0.95 on the HRSID dataset,and a 0.5%improvement in AP@0.5 and 1.7%in AP@0.5:0.95 on the SSDD dataset,surpassing other state-of-the-art methods.

A Time-Domain Numerical Simulation for Free Motion Responses of Two Ships Advancing in Head Waves

The constant panel method within the framework of potential flow theory in the time domain is developed for solving the hydrodynamic interactions between two parallel ships with forward speed.When solving problems within a time domain framework,the free water surface needs to simultaneously satisfy both the kinematic and dynamic boundary conditions of the free water surface.This provides conditions for adding artificial damping layers.Using the Runge−Kutta method to solve equations related to time.An upwind differential scheme is used in the present method to deal with the convection terms on the free surface to prevent waves upstream.Through the comparison with the available experimental data and other numerical methods,the present method is proved to have good mesh convergence,and satisfactory results can be obtained.The constant panel method is applied to calculate the hydrodynamic interaction responses of two parallel ships advancing in head waves.Numerical simulations are conducted on the effects of forward speed,different longitudinal and lateral distances on the motion response of two modified Wigley ships in head waves.Then further investigations are conducted on the effects of different ship types on the motion response.

Structural Characteristics and Evolution of a Weighted Sino-US Container Shipping Network

This study selected the Sino-US route data from the top 30 global container liner companies between December 1,2019,and December 29,2019,as the data source utilizing the complex network research methodology.It constructs a Sino-US container shipping network through voyage weighting and analyzes the essential structural characteristics to explore the network’s complex structural fea-tures.The network’s evolution is examined from three perspectives,namely,time,space,and event influence,aiming to comprehens-ively explore the network’s evolution mechanism.The results revealed that:1)the weighted Sino-US container shipping network exhib-its small-world and scale-free properties.Key hub ports in the United States include NEW YORK NY,SAVANNAH GA,LOS ANGELES CA,and OAKLAND CA,whereas SHANGHAI serving as the hub port in China.The geographical distribution of these hub ports is uneven.2)Concerning the evolution of the weighted Sino-US container shipping network,from a temporal perspective,the evolution of the regional structure of the entire Sino-US region and the Inland United States is in a stage of radiative expansion and de-velopment,with a need for further enhancement in competitiveness and development speed.The evolution of the regional structure of southern China and Europe is transitioning from the stage of radiative expansion and development to an advanced equilibrium stage.The shipping development in Northern China,the Western and Eastern United States,and Asia is undergoing significant changes but faces challenges of fierce competition and imbalances.From a spatial perspective,the rationality and effectiveness of the improved weighted Barrat-Barthelemy-Vespignani(BBV)model are confirmed through theoretical derivation.The applicability of the improved evolution model is verified by simulating the evolution of the weighted Sino-US container shipping network.From an event impact per-spective,the Corona Virus Disease 2019(COVID-19)pandemic has not fundamentally affected the spatial pattern of the weighted Sino-US container shipping network but has significantly impacted the network’s connectivity.The network lacks sufficient resilience and stability in emergency situations.3)Based on the analysis of the structural characteristics and evolution of the weighted Sino-US con-tainer shipping network,recommendations for network development are proposed from three aspects:emphasizing the development of hub ports,focusing on the balanced development of the network,and optimizing the layout of Chinese ports.

Improved Scatter Search Algorithm for Multi-skilled Personnel Scheduling of Ship Block Painting

This paper focuses on the optimization method for multi-skilled painting personnel scheduling.The budget working time analysis is carried out considering the influence of operating area,difficulty of spraying area,multi-skilled workers,and worker’s efficiency,then a mathematical model is established to minimize the completion time. The constraints of task priority,paint preparation,pump management,and neighbor avoidance in the ship block painting production are considered. Based on this model,an improved scatter search(ISS)algorithm is designed,and the hybrid approximate dynamic programming(ADP)algorithm is used to improve search efficiency. In addition,the two solution combination methods of path-relinking and task sequence combination are used to enhance the search breadth and depth. The numerical experimental results show that ISS has a significant advantage in solving efficiency compared with the solver in small scale instances;Compared with the scatter search algorithm and genetic algorithm,ISS can stably improve the solution quality. Verified by the production example,ISS effectively shortens the total completion time of the production,which is suitable for scheduling problems in the actual painting production of the shipyard.

Time-Domain Higher-Order Boundary Element Method for Simulating High Forward-Speed Ship Motions in Waves

The hydrodynamic performance of a high forward-speed ship in obliquely propagating waves is numerically examined to assess both free motions and wave field in comparison with a low forward-speed ship.This numerical model is based on the time-domain potential flow theory and higher-order boundary element method,where an analytical expression is completely expanded to determine the base-unsteady coupling flow imposed on the moving condition of the ship.The ship in the numerical model may possess different advancing speeds,i.e.stationary,low speed,and high speed.The role of the water depth,wave height,wave period,and incident wave angle is analyzed by means of the accurate numerical model.It is found that the resonant motions of the high forward-speed ship are triggered by comparison with the stationary one.More specifically,a higher forward speed generates a V-shaped wave region with a larger elevation,which induces stronger resonant motions corresponding to larger wave periods.The shoaling effect is adverse to the motion of the low-speed ship,but is beneficial to the resonant motion of the high-speed ship.When waves obliquely propagate toward the ship,the V-shaped wave region would be broken due to the coupling effect between roll and pitch motions.It is also demonstrated that the maximum heave motion occurs in beam seas for stationary cases but occurs in head waves for high speeds.However,the variation of the pitch motion with period is hardly affected by wave incident angles.

Decoding RoPax Ship Capsizes and Development of an ISO Ship Safety Standard

Marine accidents often result in significant losses of human life, environmental damage, and property destruction. Additionally, ships and offshore plants are large-scale and complex systems, making safety assessments challenging. However, the advent of onboard electronic systems has made it possible to monitor and respond more effectively. These new technologies can enhance safety levels while reducing the workload on crews. In this paper, authors analyze recent accidents involving ships with high structures above the water, such as car carriers or RoPax vessels, and propose preventive safety indicators to help prevent similar accidents from recurring.

Sending The King Ship, A Tradition Connecting Two Peoples

“The sky is dark,and it is about to rain,”goes a lyric from China’s coastal Minnan(southern Fujian)region.“The king ship is leaving the bay,papa is going out to sea,and mama is sending the ship off.May it bring us wealth,food,and the gods’protection.”The 600-year-old custom is called Ong Chun,Wangchuan,Wangkang,or“Sending the King Ship.”

Ship recognition based on HRRP via multi-scale sparse preserving method

In order to extract the richer feature information of ship targets from sea clutter, and address the high dimensional data problem, a method termed as multi-scale fusion kernel sparse preserving projection(MSFKSPP) based on the maximum margin criterion(MMC) is proposed for recognizing the class of ship targets utilizing the high-resolution range profile(HRRP). Multi-scale fusion is introduced to capture the local and detailed information in small-scale features, and the global and contour information in large-scale features, offering help to extract the edge information from sea clutter and further improving the target recognition accuracy. The proposed method can maximally preserve the multi-scale fusion sparse of data and maximize the class separability in the reduced dimensionality by reproducing kernel Hilbert space. Experimental results on the measured radar data show that the proposed method can effectively extract the features of ship target from sea clutter, further reduce the feature dimensionality, and improve target recognition performance.

Novel method for extraction of ship target with overlaps in SAR image via EM algorithm

The quality of synthetic aperture radar(SAR)image degrades in the case of multiple imaging projection planes(IPPs)and multiple overlapping ship targets,and then the performance of target classification and recognition can be influenced.For addressing this issue,a method for extracting ship targets with overlaps via the expectation maximization(EM)algorithm is pro-posed.First,the scatterers of ship targets are obtained via the target detection technique.Then,the EM algorithm is applied to extract the scatterers of a single ship target with a single IPP.Afterwards,a novel image amplitude estimation approach is pro-posed,with which the radar image of a single target with a sin-gle IPP can be generated.The proposed method can accom-plish IPP selection and targets separation in the image domain,which can improve the image quality and reserve the target information most possibly.Results of simulated and real mea-sured data demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.

欧盟AUTOSHIP项目

欧洲水域自主航运倡议项目(Autonomous Shipping Initiative for European Waters,AUTOSHIP项目)由意大利Ciaotech S.r.l.公司牵头,联合康士伯等其他欧洲国家合作伙伴共同完成。该项目通过在不同环境下运营的两艘不同类型船舶上安装和测试自主航行设施,加速新一代自主航行船舶发展,并为欧盟实现船舶自主航行制定商业化路线图。

Corporate Social Responsibility and Shipping Supply Chain Risks

This study aims to investigate whether Corporate Social Responsibility(CSR)activities reduce supply chain disruptions by examining the impact of the Suez Canal obstruction on the Ever Given container ship in March 2021.This study conclude that the more responsible companies have higher returns and are less affected by this event than the less responsible companies;the less responsible companies have lower returns.The companies with better CSR have a lower impact on their supply chains when faced with disruptions in the supply chain.