TUG AND WORKBOAT DESIGN GUIDE

Tug and workboat design guide

T
his design guide is meant to provide a basic primer for the of which changes their angle of attack as the disc rotates, thereby
general reader to help understand the many types of tugs, generating thrust in the desired direction.
workboats and other small commercial craft which ply our Z-Drive — a drive system using a screw propeller driven through
waters and some of their features and capabilities. Working closely two right angle gears and which can be rotated through 360 degrees.
with Robert Allan Ltd., we have developed the following compila-
tion. Robert Allan Ltd. has, over its 82 years of business, designed Tug types (or functions)
many hundreds of working vessels of all types customized to fit Broadly speaking, tugs are designed to perform one or more very
the specific needs of their clients worldwide. The descriptions and specific functions and are thus categorized accordingly. Of course
samples below are just that — a sample of the myriad vessel types many tugs also tend to get used to perform more than one of these
in this category. duties and thus become more “multi-purpose”. As with all things,
the more diverse the duties the more compromised the design be-
Tugboats: comes in terms of its ability to do any one function very well!
Tugs and barges are the primary means of cargo transportation Robert Allan Ltd. is the world’s leading designer of tugboats to-
used on the B.C. Coast, but this is an application rather unique day, accounting for something in the order of 35 to 40 per cent
to this area. Worldwide, tugs are most recognized for their work of all tugs built worldwide. They have developed specific families
in assisting large ships to and from their berths and for their role of tug designs to address the diverse needs of their clients, and
as salvage vessels when ships get into trouble. Typically, tugs are although these are portrayed as “classes” of existing designs,
categorized according to the type of work they do, and then by the every vessel is still customized to the specific application and new
configuration or type of propulsion system used. The following are designs are continuously developed for unique projects.
the most common descriptions used for the latter, as well as a few
All photos in the design guide courtesy of Robert Allan Ltd.
other commonly used terms in the industry.
Azimuthing Stern Drive (ASD) — a tug with steerable propulsion
units located aft in a more or less conventional propeller position.
Bollard pull — the maximum thrust which can be generated by a
vessel at zero speed (usually measured by pulling on a “bollard”).
This is the typical measure of tugboat performance.
Kort nozzle — an annular foil-shaped device used to accelerate
the flow through a propeller, thus generating more thrust than a
comparable open propeller.
RAVE tug — a new concept developed by Robert Allan Ltd. in
collaboration with Voith Turbo Schneider Propeller for a tug with
two VSP units located fore and aft, rather than in the typical side-
by-side tractor configuration.
Z-drive units in the stern of an ASD tug.
Reverse tractor — an alternate term (seldom used today) to
describe an ASD tug.
Rotor© tug — a patented configuration of tug with three Z-drive
units located in a triangular pattern below the hull, typically with
two drives forward and one drive aft.
Screw propeller — the “conventional” device used to develop
thrust in water, usually driven by a diesel engine. Vessels are often
described as single, twin or triple screw, depending on the number
of propellers they have.
Tractor — a tug with the drive units (either VSP or Z-drive) located in
the bottom of the vessel, approximately one-third of the length from
the bow. (This term is often very erroneously used to describe any
tug with omni-directional propulsion, including ASD tugs).
Voith-Schneider Propeller (VSP) — a cycloidal propeller, com-
prised of a rotating circular plate in the bottom of the vessel from
which a number of vertical foil-shaped blades project, and each VSP units on a RAVE tug.

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 TUG AND WORKBOAT DESIGN GUIDE
Ship-handling (ship-assist)/ RAmparts
harbour towage The typical ASD tug, often equipped for coastal towing and other
This is the classic “Little Toot” tug operation, assisting large ships duties, represents the most multi-purpose design in the RAL port-
onto and off of a berth by pushing and pulling as required. Tugs folio. The RAmparts 3200 tug “Ocean Pioneer” is one of the latest
are necessary because most large ships have no control over their of 100 of this class of tugs built to date.
own steering when operating at very low speeds, and they are thus
very susceptible to the forces of wind and current.
Today the vast majority of modern ship-assist tugs are fitted with
Z-drive or VSP propulsion. Harbour tugs typically range from 20 to
32 metres in length, and have power ranging from 2,000 to 4,000
kW, although there are exceptions to this depending on the size of
port and types of ships handled. Many harbour tugs are simple day
boats where the crew is aboard only to do each job.
Cates
The class name honours Robert Allan Ltd.’s long-time close rela-
tionship with this historic Vancouver towing company and the early RAmparts 3200-CL Ocean Pioneer.
compact Z-drive tug designs developed here for B.C.’s Coast.
Salvage/rescue towing
The era of the dedicated long-range salvage tug is largely gone
today — some still do exist and China has recently built some
dedicated large salvage tugs. These tugs used to be stationed in
notorious shipping lanes in order to (get paid to) assist vessels in
distress! These were typically big tugs with specialized winches
and pumps, etc. which could be used to pull ships off a beach or
prevent them from sinking. The demand for such tugs is thankfully
somewhat less today than it was a generation ago but ships still do
get in trouble and big tugs are still needed to assist. Many countries
are now using dedicated, government-chartered vessels of this
type to provide this “Coast Guard” service, but they do not have
Charles H. Cates I.
typical salvage rights. The cost of this safeguard process however
is still a challenge for many countries.
Z-Tech
An international award-winning ship-assist tug design developed Robert Allan Ltd. has designed a major new class of Salvage tug
for the Port of Singapore but now in wide use around the world, for these applications, designated as the “RASalvor” Class.
including throughout the Panama Canal.

Z-Tech™ 7000 Star Admiral. RASalvor Class design.

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TUG AND WORKBOAT DESIGN GUIDE
Escort towing AVT 3600 Class tugs
Escort tugs are the newest and most challenging of tug designs.
These tugs are designed to provide emergency steering and braking
functions to tankers (and occasionally other ships) in sensitive
or critical coastal areas. Since the Exxon Valdez incident in 1989,
many jurisdictions legislated that tankers within specific waters
must be “escorted” by tugboats but, at the time, the ability of tugs
to be effective at this mission was not well understood. In the past
15 years, the industry has developed many very powerful and ef-
fective escort tugs designs, and the ability to predict their per-
formance capabilities are well-developed amongst at least a few
major design firms. Escorting is distinguished from regular ship-
handling because, by definition, it takes place at higher speeds,
from seven to 10 knots typically. Escort tugs generate the required
ship control steering and braking forces in the “indirect towing” Apex, Tenax and Phenix — owned by Ostensjo Rederi AS.
mode by combining the hydrodynamic forces generated by their
RAZer 3000 Class tugs
hulls with the propulsive forces of their drive units.
Robert Allan Ltd. has been a world-leader in developing escort
tug technology through an extensive internal research program.
Vessel-types designed for high-performance escorting include:
• AVT Class — Escort tugs with Voith Propulsion
• ART Class — Escort Tugs in a Rotor tug configuration
• RAZer Class — Escort tugs with Z-drive Propulsion
• RAstar Class — Escort tugs incorporating a unique hull form
designed to maximize indirect steering and braking forces and to
provide much-enhanced sea-keeping capability.

ART 85-35 Class Rotor tug

Foss’ America and Pacific Star.

RAstar3900 Class Escort tug

3D image of a new ART 85-35 Rotor tug. Svitzer Kilroom — 39 metres, 116 tonnes bollard pull.

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 TUG AND WORKBOAT DESIGN GUIDE
Log towing Coastal towing
The classic B.C. towing scene…a little tug with a long raft of logs In B.C., the majority of tugs are designed for towing barges
dragging behind. These tugs spend many hours at full power but between coastal ports. These tugs must be able to handle more
very low speed and are typically quite small. weather than a harbour tug and also don’t need the same degree
of fendering. They have larger crews and hence more crew facili-
ties. In general, these tugs will have conventional propulsion with
single or twin screws and a towing winch aft. Since the late 1960s
almost every tug built in B.C. has also been fitted with Kort nozzles
for better performance. Tugs towing oil barges must be twin screw.
Robert Allan Ltd. offers the TRAder Class of tugs for this service.
Many of the tugs designed by RAL in the 1960s and 1970s are still
the backbone of the West Coast fleet today.

Harmac Fir (a second-generation Robert Allan design).

Ocean towing
There are relatively few large tugs today designed exclusively for
this service but many were common in the 1960s and 1970s.
Tows are typically large barges with expensive cargoes such as
offshore drilling platforms. These tugs are single or more frequent-
ly twin screw; have large fuel capacity and quite large crews; and
must be capable of coping with extreme ocean conditions. Today,
Hamilton Baillie.
much of this work is done by large offshore supply vessels.

Irving Birch. Jervis Crown.

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TUG AND WORKBOAT DESIGN GUIDE
Terminal support Anchor-handling
This is a relatively new category of tug used to provide ship-handling Some tugs are designed to deploy, relocate or retrieve the large an-
and other services at either offshore oil terminals or at LNG ter- chors used in offshore drilling applications. Although typically this
minals situated in more exposed locales. Because they work in operation is done by larger AHTS (Anchor-Handling Tug/Supply
typically rougher waters, they tend to be larger and more power- vessels), tugs are very useful for working with smaller anchors.
ful than normal ship-handling tugs and will frequently also have This operation requires a large roller at deck level aft, an open stern
fire-fighting and anchor-handling capabilities. Some may also have and a powerful winch, as well as typically wooden sheathing to
some deck or bulk fuel or water cargo capacity. protect the steel deck from the impact of anchors coming aboard.
Robert Allan Ltd. offers the RAstar Class and the larger RAmpage RAmpage Class tugs, such as the RAmpage 5500 Seaways 20,
Class designs for these applications. are specifically designed for this operation, although some smaller
tugs have also been so equipped such as the recent AVT tug Spinola.
RAstar 3800 Class
RAmpage 5500 Class

Seaways 20.
Bourbon Yack.

AVT 3800 Class tug

RAmpage 4500 Class

AOS Power. Spinola.

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 TUG AND WORKBOAT DESIGN GUIDE
Fire-fighting Yarding
In most ports in the world, the tug fleets are equipped with fire- Yarding tugs are typically smaller tugs used to move barges around
fighting capability to provide a “first response” capability as tugs and assemble barge tows for large coastal towing or for river tow-
are nearly always in the vicinity. In some cases, the “tug” function ing operations. In the latter case these are usually built in a “pusher”
takes a back seat to the fire-fighting capabilities of the boat, as was configuration.
the case for a recent project for Kuwait.
Almost any tug can be equipped for fire-fighting although due to Training
the size and cost of the equipment involved, typically this is left to In common with many other industries worldwide, the cadre of
larger sizes of tugs such as the local Seaspan Raven. well-trained tug operators is getting older. In addition the tech-
nologies involved in modern tugs have long since surpassed the
RAstar2800 Class days of hanging onto the big spoked wheel with salt spray in your
teeth! Robert Allan Ltd. designed the ultra-compact BRAtt training
tug in order to provide a platform that would bridge the gap between
simulator training and the full-size tug so that Masters-in-training
would get a “real-life” experience driving Z-drive tugs without tying
up the resources of a multi-million dollar working tug (and its full
crew) while learning the skills necessary to handle such a ves-
sel safely. RAL worked closely with local model-maker/trainer Ron
Burchett on this project.
BRAtt training tug

Seaspan Raven — Fi-Fi 1 capability — 2400m^3/hr pumping

capacity.

Line-handling
Line-handling tugs are specialized tugs, typically quite small, whose
function is to take the lines of incoming ships and move them into
positions from which they can be secured. They frequently are dis-
tinguished by a pipe “cage” which prevents the ship’s lines from
getting entangled in their masts or exhaust pipes.
RAscal Class

The Rascal 2000 Class Elyah. The BRAtt.

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TUG AND WORKBOAT DESIGN GUIDE
Various workboats Fireboats
Designed as emergency response vessels for major port cities
Other types of workboats are generally purpose-designed and can
around the world, these vessels are primarily configured as fire-
take many and diverse configurations depending upon the applica-
boats but frequently serve as Command and Control centres or
tion and the owners objectives. The following are but a few of the
indeed as primary response vessels for local emergency actions
many types seen on this coast and internationally.
such as pollution response and search and rescue. These ves-
Patrol boats sels have a diverse array of configurations and fire-fighting
Typically these are high-speed patrol craft intended for local police, performance and are generally custom-designed to the specific
Coast Guard or harbour patrol functions. These can be monohulls risks encountered in each port as well as to its unique operating
such as the Port Vancouver vessel Takaya or catamarans such as environment.
those used by the RCMP. Robert Allan Ltd. has emerged as the world’s leading designer of
fireboats in the past decade with many unique vessels to its credit
throughout North America, Asia and the Middle East. Examples are
included below.

Port of Los Angeles

Takaya — Port Metro Vancouver.

Crewboats
Crewboats are designed for either coastal transportation or, more
typically, for crew transfer at oil field and offshore support duties. Warner L. Lawrence — a VSP powered fireboat.
The majority of designs feature large cargo decks and are available
in either aluminium or steel construction depending on speed and
New York City
duty requirements.

Firefighter 2 and Three Forty-Three — two 42-metre,11,500

Zamil 40 — a RAlly 3500 class crewboat working in Saudi Arabia. cu.m/hr, 18-knot fireboats for FDNY.

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 TUG AND WORKBOAT DESIGN GUIDE
Survey and research vessels Search and rescue
These include vessels equipped for scientific research and sur- This term is usually reserved for vessels dedicated to search and
vey of many types, which can be large or small, and are used for a rescue (SAR) missions. Such vessels are typically owned by
wide range of applications including hydrographic survey, fisheries National Coast Guards and therefore also fulfill various other pa-
research, seismic survey and oceanographic research. Vessels are trol and enforcement duties. These can be as small as a six-metre
noted for their capabilities in continuous and extended operations RHIB or an offshore cutter of 70 metres or more in length. Larger
in a full range of environments. Frequently, they include features to vessels also typically have fast rescue craft aboard which can be
significantly reduce onboard and radiated noise. launched by various means including davits or stern ramps.
Robert Allan Ltd. has recently designed several major research
vessels, including three small fisheries research vessels for the
Canadian Coast Guard (nearing completion in Quebec); the OFSV
Fishery Research vessels, which will be amongst the first to be
built under the new Canadian NSPS shipbuilding program; and the
92-metre CSIRO Oceanographic Research vessel for the Australian
Government currently being built in Singapore.

CCGS Type 500 SAR Cutter Gordon Reid.

Icebreakers
Vessels designated as “icebreakers” typically have that as their
primary mission and are thus used to keep navigation channels
open and to assist other vessels beset in ice. However, increas-
ingly, very powerful “icebreakers” have other primary missions
such as oil field support, supply and anchor-handling. Many other
CSIRO Oceanographic Research vessel. vessels can simply be “ice-strengthened” to enable them to work
occasionally in ice-infested waters.
Robert Allan Ltd. has designed many icebreaking vessels for
service in Canada and more recently in such diverse areas as
Sakhalin (Russia) and the Caspian Sea.

Svitzer Aniva — one of four TundRA 3400 Class icebreaking

Inshore Fisheries Research/Patrol Vessels for DFO, Canada. escort tugs for support of the LNG terminal at Sakhalin, Russia.

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