A new fisheries and oceanographic research vessel for Argentina: R/V Victor Angelescu

In 2016 the Argentine Institute for Fisheries Research (INIDEP) initiated the building of a new Fisheries and Oceanographic Research Vessel at the Armon shipyards, in Vigo, Spain. The new R/V, named Victor Angelescu after one of the pioneers in Fisheries science in Argentina, was designed and built to comply with stringent specifications. The R/V V. Angelescu will be a regional class ship with her 53 m length and 13 m width. The ship will have DP capabilities (class B) and will be driven by a tandem of two A/C motors of 1050 kW each. Power will come from an array of three diesel gen-sets generating 3120 kVA. The ship has to meet the ICES 209 guidelines for minimizing the radiation of noise into the sea. Hence, several aspects of the engineering obey to this goal, as the double resilient mountings of gen-sets and propulsion motors. The allocation of the numerous scientific instruments, including a full suite of acoustic systems and the necessary deck gear in a rather small sized package, was a challenge in itself. The performance of the acoustic instrumentation was another premise. All acoustic transducers will be allocated on the bottom of a drop keel (centre board) protruding up to 2.5 below the ship's hull, in order to minimize attenuation due to the air bubbles layer near the hull. A traditional shaped bow was chosen to replace the commonly adopted bulbous bow design, in order to minimize the amount of air trapped bellow the hull when surveying. A prominent bulb aft allocates the propeller shaft, positioning the propeller as far as possible from the hull to minimize the occurrence of high pressure spots and thus limiting the possibilities of propeller cavitations. A fixed five blades propeller of 3.2 m diameter, rotating at 190 rpm, will provide the necessary thrust for an 11 kn surveying speed (13 kn max.). The tips of the propeller blades were carefully engineered as to prevent radiation of high frequency noise or “singing”. The ship will have to endurance her sea trials during July-September 2017, delivery to Agentina is expected by late October.