Ultrasonic Thickness Measurement in Samsun for Black Sea Cargo Ships

Inspection services for ships at Samsun

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

Where gauging happens at Samsun

At the port, ships are gauged alongside during cargo work. Holds are opened one by one as discharge finishes, ballast tanks are measured when they are empty and ventilated, and hatch covers and coamings are checked from the deck. Container feeders offer shorter windows, in which we limit the scope to a defined set of tanks or to scrubber and ballast piping. Access is through the terminal's security procedures and is arranged through the ship's agent, with crew prepared to issue entry permits and have spaces gas-free before we board.

For ships at anchor, launches are booked by the agent and the sea state decides what is feasible. The work is ordered so that the most valuable readings come first, usually ballast tanks and deck plating at hatch corners, and any remaining scope is picked up at the next call or in dock. Ships that will dock in the Marmara or in a yard elsewhere are given their readings organised by frame and strake, so the yard can use them for ordering steel before the ship arrives.

• Samsun port general cargo and bulk berths — hold, hatch cover and coaming gauging as cargo work releases each space
• Container and multipurpose berths — short-window checks of ballast tanks, deck structure and piping on feeders and project ships
• Ro-ro berths — car deck plating, ramp structure and ballast tank gauging on ro-ro ships during turnaround calls
• Anchorage off the port — deck and ballast tank gauging on ships waiting for a berth or weather, by launch via the agent
• Pre-docking and pre-purchase gauging — an organised steel scope handed to the superintendent or the buyer's adviser before decisions are made

Regulation and trade on the central Black Sea coast

Ship safety and port operations in Turkey sit with the Ministry of Transport and Infrastructure and the harbour masters, and Turkish ports are covered by both the Black Sea MoU and the Mediterranean MoU on port state control. Bulk carriers and general cargo ships on regional trades are inspected often, and the findings that tend to recur are structural: wasted hatch covers, corroded coamings, holed ventilators and degraded air pipe heads. A deficiency at Samsun or a neighbouring port is a common reason for an owner to commission gauging of the surrounding steel.

Because the Black Sea is outside the emission control areas, ships here follow the global fuel limit unless they have come from or are heading to the Marmara or Mediterranean. Trade from Samsun links Turkey with Ukraine, Russia, Georgia and Romania, and shipping on these routes is shaped by the wider regional situation, which makes schedules less predictable than usual. For vessels that call at EU ports, the EU Ship Recycling Regulation's Inventory of Hazardous Materials and EU ETS reporting add compliance work, but not extra steel measurement. Owners rely on readings to plan docking and to support charter negotiations.

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

A gauging job at Samsun runs the same way whatever the ship type. The sequence below is what the superintendent, the attending surveyor and the yard can expect from us.

Samsun has its own regional airport, and the team normally connects through Istanbul to reach it. From the airport the port is reached by road, and the agent handles gate passes, terminal safety briefings and anchorage launches, with crew lists and certificates sent ahead. A Turkish visa is required for Indian passport holders, so we start the application when a call looks likely and keep the validity wide enough to cover delays in the ship's schedule or weather holds at the port.

• 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.

Related