Impact of Components Reliability on Economic Efficiency of Arctic Gas Tanker for the "Yamal" Project with Electrical Propulsion

The paper presents an attempt to investigate the interrelation between the components’ reliability features, such as failure rates and repair rates, of a diesel-electric multi-drive multi-motor propulsion system of an Arctic gas tanker for the "Yamal" project for a year-round Arctic navigation along the Northern Sea Route, and economic efficiency of the icebreaker tanker operation. Arctic navigation imposes specific strict requirements to propulsion systems of the tanker, related to the comprehensive reliability and safety. The task of providing year-round navigation along the Northern Sea Route makes it even more important to ensure reliable and sustainable operation under severe ice conditions in the eastern sector of the Russian Arctic with the support of nuclear icebreakers. An important feature of Arctic navigation is the strict requirements on operational availability and fault tolerance not only for the tanker’s propulsion system, but also for the atomic icebreakers, which support the tankers to operate in heavy ice conditions of the Eastern part of Northern Sea Route. The reliability analysis was carried out based on Markov models. The dependencies between reliability indicators and economic efficiency of tanker during different seasonal operations were determined and discussed.