Evolution of Automatic Systems Mooring Sytems in Commercial Ports Evolución de los sistemas de amarre automático en puertos comerciales

Abstract

In the middle of the last century, some major changes began to take place in maritime transport, affecting both the regular lines and bulk transport. There were innovations in many areas of maritime activity, with the appearance of new means of traffic, new equipment and new methods. The main objective of these changes was to reduce the time of vessels in port, since this is considered unproductive. In this context, the traditional vessel mooring systems used in most of the world's commercial ports have evolved very slowly towards more sophisticated automatic systems.

The aim of this work is to identify and formalize the evolution of the technological innovations and technical modifications in automated mooring systems applied to merchant vessels. For this reason a qualitative analysis of the evolution of the different mooring devices developed throughout history until now has been carried out. For the first time, five generations of vacuum-based automated mooring technology are identified, coexisting with the traditional mooring system (since 1969 to nowdays). In all cases, the application of these mooring systems, in relation to the traditional system, does not imply any loss in the safety of the vessel moored during its stay in port.