Ultrasonic Thickness Measurement for Ships Calling at Karadeniz Ereğli

Inspection services for ships at Ereğli

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

Where a ship can be gauged at Ereğli

At the steelworks berths, gauging follows the cargo operation. Holds are gauged one at a time as the grabs finish and the cleaning gang has swept the tank top, with the ship's crew preparing ventilation, lighting and safe access in advance and the master issuing the enclosed-space entry permit for each space. A bulk carrier that stays several days discharging can usually take a complete programme of frames, bulkheads and hatch coamings in that time, while a quick ore or coal discharge may support only a few holds. Access to the berths follows the port's own ISPS rules and is booked through the ship's agent.

When berths are occupied, ships wait at anchor off the coast. Those waits can be long enough for deck work, hatch cover panels and coamings, ballast tank readings and, where the holds are empty, hold structure. Boarding is by launch and is weather-dependent, so the programme is ordered with the highest-priority areas first. For a full docking-grade scope, owners generally plan the work in a yard in the Marmara, and the Ereğli readings become the preliminary steel estimate.

• Steelworks bulk berths — hold frame, bulkhead and tank-top gauging on bulk carriers during grab discharge of ore and coal
• Steel product berths — hatch cover, coaming and hold checks on general cargo ships and bulkers taking coils, slabs and plate
• Outer anchorage off the coast — deck, hatch cover and ballast tank gauging on ships waiting for a berth, reached by launch
• Ballast tank access during cargo work — topside, hopper and double-bottom tanks measured once emptied, ventilated and certified safe
• Pre-docking checks before a Marmara yard call — an early steel list for the superintendent, built from readings taken in hold and tank

Black Sea trade, port state control and what drives inspection here

Turkey is a member of both the Black Sea MoU and the Mediterranean MoU, and bulk carriers on regional trades are regularly inspected under port state control. Structural condition is a recurring theme with older bulkers: wasted hatch coamings, corroded air pipe heads and wasting in hold frames are the sort of findings that lead a manager to commission gauging before the next inspection finds it first. Turkish-flag and Turkish-managed bulk tonnage is classed with a mix of international societies and the national society, and superintendents usually work to the class's own thickness measurement report format.

The Black Sea is outside the Mediterranean emission control area, so ships calling at Ereğli face the global fuel limit rather than the 0.10% area limit, although ships that continue into the Sea of Marmara cross into the ECA. For vessels that will later trade to European Union ports, the EU Ship Recycling Regulation requires a current Inventory of Hazardous Materials, and voyages touching EU ports bring EU ETS reporting. These rules do not change how steel is measured, but they do shape how owners decide when to dock a ship and how much steel work to put into it.

Wherever a ship is outside a sulphur emission control area, the global 0.50% sulphur cap applies, and many of the ships calling at Ereğli 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 Ereğli

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

The nearest international airports are in Istanbul, with Sabiha Gökçen on the Anatolian side the more convenient for the coast road east, though the journey to Ereğli is by road and depends on traffic. Port passes at the steelworks berths and launches for anchorage work are arranged through the ship's agent, with crew lists and certificates sent in advance. Turkey requires a visa for Indian passport holders, so we begin the application once a call is likely and keep the validity covering the ship's expected window, which can shift with weather and berthing.

• 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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