Broken stow on Navy ships represents significant lost opportunity for the war-fighter. Broken stow, is defined in the solicitation as the ratio of unusable desk space to total deck space and is reported to be as high as 70% (1). A major contributor to broken deck space are the lashing/tie down requirements outlined in MIL-STD-209K. Significant break stow inefficiencies occur when heavy weather requirements have to be met. Currently the lack of adequate tools available to the commander to provide true understanding of survivability risk leaves the untenable choice of erring on the conservative side. Sophisticated fuel compensating systems are operated on a limited class of ships but the process is evolving slowly. ICODES, a software load planning tool, offers solutions for the full fleet by using ICDM and Artificial Intelligence principles however the process is still a study and thus far has proven time consuming (2). The resultant: The commander is now faced with a difficult choice with sparse data, compromise ship survivability or compromise the mission. The mission can be realized, albeit slower response, by requesting another ship. The current situation is expensive for the US Military but ultimately the correct choice for the commander is to maintain ship and crew safety. Pad Eye Grid System (PEGS) system is a system of deck rails that will retrofit to existing deck Pad Eyes. Break stow is reduced by offering load masters more tie down options in the right location and load sharing ability using pad eyes that are normally masked underneath stowage. The bottom face of the rail will have adjustable slide locking mechanism in anticipation of uneven pad eye grids. The top face of the rail will have pad eye geometries that are normally used on the ship and familiar to the crew. Fully engineered through both Phases the PEGS solution will provide the load master both more tie-down options with load sharing capability. Deck-fittings will have limits on how many provisions can be attached. The problem is both lack of physical space available within the fitting geometry and working load limits. The PEGS systems solution provides more tie down options on the deck and provides load sharing opportunities with unused pad-eyes will provide significantly more and better options for the load master.
Benefit: The successful solution will work with legacy tie downs and advanced tie down concepts alike. PEGS program design embraces the old school hardware in the loop approach to spiral development. The overarching goal is to keep the user community engaged in meaningful functionality exercises, these exercises are intended to identify subtle operational constraints that cannot be readily quantified but are necessary to prepare for user adoption. The low technical risk nature of the program design allows the R&D program to accelerate development cycles and get to transition quickly to save R&D investment and work for the war-fighter today. Concepts and product developed in this program can applied to commercial shipping industry.
Keywords: heavy weather, heavy weather, load sharing deck rails, Pad Eye Grid System (PEGS), Retrofit, load planning tools, break stow reduction
