Ultrasonic Thickness Measurement for Ships Calling at Ambarlı, Istanbul

Inspection services for ships at Ambarlı

Each service has its own page with the method, the class requirements and what the report contains.

Where a ship can be gauged at Ambarlı

At the container terminals, work is done alongside during cargo operations under the terminal's own access, ISPS and safety rules. A gauging team usually boards through the gangway watch, is escorted to the work area, and keeps clear of the lashing gangs and the cranes. Spaces that can be reached while the ship works are ballast tanks entered from deck, the main deck and hatch cover tops, coaming plating, accessible parts of the cell guide structure and the engine room piping that serves the scrubber. Items that need the hull opened or the ship empty are left for a docking and flagged for it.

The anchorage off the coast is the second venue. A ship waiting for a berth can be boarded by launch for a longer programme, and the delay that irritates a charterer is useful to the superintendent. Sea state decides whether a launch transfer is sensible, and the scope is ordered so the most important readings come first in case the ship is called to the berth. For anything that needs a dry hull, owners normally send the ship on to the Tuzla yards in Istanbul or to one of the Marmara yards, with gauging readings from Ambarlı carried forward into the docking report.

• Container terminal berths — ballast tanks, hatch covers, coamings, cell guide structure and deck gauged during cargo work under terminal permits
• Liquid cargo jetties — deck, deck piping and certified ballast tanks on tankers and chemical carriers within the terminal's hot and cold work rules
• General cargo and ro-ro berths — hold, ramp and car deck structure on ships calling for steel, project cargo or vehicles
• Ambarlı anchorage — pre-docking and condition gauging on ships waiting for a berth, reached by launch through the agent
• Scrubber and engine room piping on liner tonnage — wash-water, overboard and sea water lines checked at the berth
• Handover to a Marmara yard — readings carried forward to a docking at Tuzla or elsewhere on the sea

Port state control, harbour authority and trade context

Turkey belongs to the Black Sea MoU and the Mediterranean MoU, and the harbour master's office and the Ministry of Transport and Infrastructure oversee ships calling at Ambarlı. Container ships are inspected by risk profile, and structural findings on older tonnage, such as wasted hatch coaming tops, cracked lashing bridges or holed air pipes, tend to appear in deficiency lists long before a docking is due. Turkish ships may be classed with Türk Loydu alongside the major international societies, and owners that run mixed fleets often ask for the same gauging format across all of them.

Cargo ships that go on to EU ports are drawn into the EU Ship Recycling Regulation, which requires a valid Inventory of Hazardous Materials on board, and into the EU's carbon rules for those voyages. That pushes technical managers to keep their asset records tidy, and measured thickness data from an Ambarlı call is easy to file against the hull record. Turkish liner services run in the Black Sea, Aegean and Mediterranean, and the Marmara's position between them means the port sees many of the same hulls year after year, which makes trend gauging realistic.

Wherever a ship is outside a sulphur emission control area, the global 0.50% sulphur cap applies, and many of the ships calling at Ambarlı meet it with an exhaust gas cleaning system rather than compliant fuel. Scrubber wash-water piping, the overboard discharge and the hull penetration around it corrode quickly in service, especially on open-loop systems, and are worth adding to the gauging scope.

How a thickness measurement job runs at Ambarlı

The sequence for a thickness measurement job at Ambarlı is short and written down, so the yard, the surveyor and the superintendent know who arranges what.

The team flies into Istanbul, using Istanbul Airport or Sabiha Gökçen depending on the day's flights, and reaches Ambarlı by road across the city. Terminal passes are arranged through the ship's agent, who also books launches for anchorage work, so crew lists, technician certificates and equipment lists go to the agent ahead of arrival. Technicians from India need a Turkish visa, so we start the application as soon as the call is nominated and keep the visa period long enough to absorb a berth that shifts.

• Send the vessel name or IMO number, ship type, class society, the survey due (annual, intermediate, renewal survey number, CAP or owner's condition survey), the port and dates, and the scope you expect.
• We confirm the scope against the class rules for that survey, prepare the thickness measurement plan with frame and section references, and say whether the measurement will be credited to a class survey.
• Mobilisation is planned around visa lead times and the vessel's schedule; the ship's agent arranges port access, and the yard or ship arranges staging, lighting, ventilation and gas-free certificates.
• Gauging with calibrated ultrasonic thickness gauges: through sound coatings only where the gauge's through-coating mode has been verified on a coated reference, otherwise on cleaned bare steel, with every reading tied to its frame, strake and location on the sketch.
• Readings are compared with original thicknesses as work proceeds; substantial and excessive corrosion and any cracks are reported to the attending surveyor and the superintendent the same day.
• The final report is issued on the class thickness-measurement formats with sketches, a summary of locations exceeding the allowable margins, piping tables where piping was in scope, and the gauge calibration and technician certificates.

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