Container ships: fire-related risks

Abstract

The paper describes a study on fire accidents taking place aboard container ships. In total, 39 confirmed container ship fire accidents were discovered in the period 1996-2017. An epidemiological hazard analysis disclosed four high-consequence hazardous cargos that are calcium hypochlorite, compressed charcoal briquette products, rechargeable batteries and divinylbenzene. Cause-consequence analyses of the fire accidents with the four types of cargos were carried out that explicated all possible scenarios of accident escalation starting from a cause and ending with a consequence. The frequency of experiencing major fires was estimated as well. Further, different solutions to reduce fire detection time were explored and supported by fire simulation modelling with computational fluid dynamic software. Results of the simulation for two different detection solutions are presented.