Ship mooring bollard

for terminalssmart

What is a Smart Bollard? While resembling a standard dock bollard, the Smart Bollard offers advanced features to enhance the safety and efficiency of mooring operations. Positioned permanently on quays, this innovative bollard is equipped with sensors to measure the load on mooring lines. Such measurements translate the structural movement arising from mooring line tension, providing valuable data to port authorities, terminal operators, and vessels. This advanced bollard dock system can be used for all seagoing vessels, including cruise vessels and container and bulk carriers. Why a Smart Bollard? Until now it has not been possible to measure the load on mooring lines using a bollard. The lack of exact load data for moored vessels means that ports have to assume maximum mooring loads. For the Port Authority and Terminal Operator it is important to know exactly what the loads on the mooring lines are, especially in case of bad weather, with high waves, strong currents, and gusts. If the loads on the lines are too high the ropes can break and the ship will detach from the quay, which may cause serious accidents. The use of Smart Bollards can prevent this from happening. They increase safety by giving a real-time overview of the loads on the mooring lines, and provide a better understanding of overall mooring forces as data is logged. In addition to this, the Smart Bollard can also help the terminal or port to improve efficiency with the loading and unloading of vessels. For port operations, a ship must be fully stable whilst moored. Loose mooring lines can result in excessive movement of the ship as a result of passing vessels or high winds.