Approaches to Advanced Fire and Damage Control on Battleship

Abstract

Warships are unique type of military armaments. Almost every part of a warship is designed to maintain maximum maritime capabilities to ensure the maritime national Interests and security. The design of the hull structure is therefore complex. The number of rooms in the ship is large according to the mission and stability of the ship during battle. The complexity of the hull has a huge effect on the ship's damage control system. Special designs of each room suck as the engine room, generator room, ammunition chamber, fire control room and kitchen require a different fire prevention and extinguishing method. Therefore, the hull is built into several blocks put together.

          The technology of fire prevention and extinguishing systems consists of smoke detectors, heat detectors as well as some advanced fire-fighting equipment like automatic fire sprinkler, gas suppression system and high-pressure compressed-foam suppression system. These technologies could improve the ability to prevent damage on the warships. However, they are still only in their experimental and prototype stage before the actual installation on the warships, although, in some ocean liners, damage prevention technologies as a combination of the tow systems have been adopted. As for the case of warships, the problems are more delicate, completely different and more challenging due to the large number of rooms, maritime equipment, the naval requirements and etc.

          In addition to detecting and suppressing damages, reduction of the flammability rate of polymeric materials also plays a very important role as a mean of reducing fuel to the fire.

          Selections of a polymer material with flame resistance properties and a Nano-level fire-resistant coating metal on ​​the ship's munitions is one of the main ways of reducing the amount of fuel to the fire and therefore could prevent /eliminate damage to the inside of the warships.