Retractable Flettner Rotors For Ease Of Shipping Goods And Cargos

By Author: Nishan Pitterson
Total Articles: 5
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Technology is ever evolving. With time, the needs of people are changing to meet the demands of people, technology is evolving too. Today in every aspect of our life we take the help of technology to make things easier and simpler. The global transport industry too is coming up with new kinds of technologies to provide safer and faster passage for people, goods as well as cargo across the globe. Like the shipping transport industry has come up with the technology of RFR or retractable Flettner rotors. The introduction of Flettner rotors has been a revolutionary innovation itself and with the invention of retractable Flettner rotors the Flettner rotors are now complete in helping the water transport industry move forward quite a few steps.

Before the introduction of RFR in to the shipping industry, E ship 1, owned by German company, Enercon with Flettner rotors was introduced in to the market. Flettner rotors use the principle of Magnus effect that follows the physics of force generated from rotating motion i.e. when an object rotates it creates a force perpendicular to ...
... its direction. The ship has four large rotors on the deck that are connected mechanically to the ship’s propellers and with the help of wind power as well as the force created from the whirlpool made by the rotating propellers; the ship moves forward faster and can withstand even the stormiest weather. There was only one problem with this technology, the large Flettner rotors on the deck of the ship made it difficult for it to be accepted in different ports of the world. The reason being, these rotors were seen as problems to loading and unloading of goods and cargos from other ships using cranes due to the risk of damaging the rotors or the cranes in the process hence the access to various ports for E ship 1 is limited. To combat this problem, the retracting Flettner rotors or RFR was thought of.

The retractable Flettner rotors are controlled and monitored by software and hence need no extra manpower. They are well tested and most importantly they can be fitted in newly designed as well as older vessels too. The fitting in older vessels can be done in any port of the world in about 14 days as the rotors can be shipped to any parts of the world. The rotors come with an annual service contract too.