| Wärtsilä tunnel thruster approval |
| Wärtsilä has successfully obtained a Lloyd’s Register (LR) ‘Type Approval’ Certificate for the Wärtsilä WTT11 tunnel thruster, which means the unit will not have to undergo a design review for each individual vessel or hull number. Wärtsilä says approval certification will also mean cost savings, as well as reductions in production time, providing a shorter lead time for customers. The WTT11 belongs to Wärtsilä’s new portfolio of thrusters. The final step in the approval process involved a factory audit of the specific location where the thrusters are produced – the company's dedicated manufacturing facility in Wuxi, China. This factory is now recognised as capable of producing thrusters to the design specification and test plans. The design review of the WTT11 covered the entire thruster system, its variants, and options for the whole new portfolio of Wärtsilä thrusters. The new Wärtsilä WTT thruster series has models with a maximum power rating of 4,500 kW. The thrusters have been comprehensively tested in Wärtsilä's full scale test facility in Tuusula, Finland. The WTT11 has a maximum power rating of 1,100 kW and is electric motor driven (suitable for several input speeds). It can have either a controllable pitch or fixed-pitch propeller and the design complies with the latest requirements regarding environmentally friendly lubrication. The hydrodynamic performance of each thruster unit is optimised based on state-of-the-art Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) analyses. |