Extreme Constructions_ The Meraviglia Cruise Ship _ Free Documentary

This video is brought to you by NordVPN. Surf the internet safely for 70% off, cutting the monthly price to only $3.49, plus an additional month free at nordvpn.com. 315 meters long, 65 meters high, a total weight of 80,000 tons. This is the Meraviglia, the latest jewel of the Atlantic's shipyards. A cruise ship equipped with all the latest technology. A design that employs an incredibly high performance system of simulation calculations and an army of engineers. A giant puzzle made from 300,000 pieces of steel. Huge sheets of metal had to be cut and then soldered to perfection. A huge construction site, starting with the huge gantry crane, the most powerful lifting machine in Europe, capable of lifting blocks of 1,200 tons and positioning them to the nearest millimeter. The Meraviglia involved building a real self-sufficient city for several thousand inhabitants. Four years of research and work for a delivery with a strict deadline. The Meraviglia, Italian for marvel, is not only a giant of the seas, but also one of the most ecological liners ever built, despite having unequal propulsion power for this type of ship. For this crazy venture to succeed, the ship required 6 million hours of work. Thousands of men and women with one mission, to build the biggest cruise liner in history for a European ship owner. After four years of construction, take a look behind the scenes at an extraordinary achievement. A 600 million euro giant of the seas filled with innovation, the ship of the future. The Saint-Nazaire shipyard is located on the west coast of France, less than 60 kilometers from Nantes. At a size of 150 hectares, it is the largest shipyard in Europe and one of the six largest in the world. On this site, military vessels, tankers and new generation cruise ships are built. Always enormous constructions. The location of the yards is ideal for designing these giants of the seas. The Atlantic Ocean is a stone's throw away and its depth at high tide allows the largest ships in the world to be launched from the construction site. For the construction of the Meraviglia, the shipyards have to meet very strict specifications. The stability of the vessel at sea must be exemplary. Seasickness is the last thing the passengers want, and so one of the priorities of engineers is to limit the pitch of the vessel. The vibrations felt in the rooms and also on the deck of the ship must be as limited as possible. Also, the customers must not be inconvenienced by the smoke coming from the huge chimneys of the ship, so the ship owner demands that particular attention be paid to this. And it is not only the comfort of the passengers that is the subject of such precise studies. The energy consumption of this new liner was reduced by 20 percent compared to ships in the same category. This means a fuel economy of several hundreds of thousands of euros per year, but also fewer gases released into the atmosphere. The delivery of the Meraviglia was planned for less than four years after the signing of the contract, a strict deadline. If the liner is not ready, the penalties for delay are exorbitant. More than 100,000 euros per day. In order to succeed in this crazy challenge, the shipyards have developed revolutionary techniques and impeccable organization. The boats are split up into various sections. The first stage begins with the arrival of the metal sheets needed for the Meraviglia's construction. They arrive directly in a hangar at the end of the building site. The sheets will be cut in this 300 meter long building. This is where the liner comes to life. The 300,000 pieces of the puzzle, cut out day and night, take shape. Robots take care of the cutting work to the tenth of a millimeter on high resistance sheets. These steel plates respond to a growing demand from ship owners. Cruise ships, unlike military vessels, are in open sea configurations. The ship must give an impressive sensation of lightness. The sheets are therefore very thin. Another advantage is that the lighter the liner is, the less fuel it consumes while moving. Cutting the pieces is the first challenge for the building sites. Some sheets can be up to 20 meters long. For engineers, the challenge is to get as many elements out of each sheet as possible. To minimize waste, the cut of each piece is calculated by a computer, which sometimes requires complex cuts to generate unusual pieces. Like this one. The bulb alone is a steel monster. It has two purposes. To increase speed thanks to better penetration of the water by the ship, and to save hundreds of thousands of euros of fuel each year. Loic Morand worked on its development. We see here the first wave that is created by the bow of the ship. As speed increases, the wave increases, and this mass of water will slow down the ship. With the addition of the bulb, a second wave will appear below the bow. With the disappearance of the enormous wave at the front of the ship, less energy is needed to move the ship forward. The size and form of the bulb adapts to the bow of each vessel. The selection of the most effective profile for a bulb is the work of hydrodynamic engineers. A bulb with the best possible profile decreases water resistance by 20%. This process has been specially developed for very large vessels. The other part of the liner that also experiences water resistance is the hull of the ship. Like the bulb, the shape of the hull of the Meraviglia has also been subject to considerable research and, as such, has benefited from a new system for its design. A world first, the Meraviglia benefits from software that allows settings of the hull to be cross-referenced with sea conditions. This software takes advantage of new high-performance algorithms called CFD calculations. This new technology for the study of fluid mechanics has shown spectacular results, which has allowed the hull of the Meraviglia to be designed with the perfect profile. CFD is Computational Fluid Dynamics. It consists of solving the Navier-Stokes equations, which are the equations that manage the mechanics of fluids, with certain turbulence hypotheses, and which allow us to determine the flow through the entire shape of the hull, through all points, in a numerical way. These calculations of the turbulence acting on the hull of an ocean liner are a revolutionary part of the Meraviglia's design. The results obtained inform engineers about the speed of the ship with different hull shapes. They allow designers to model more than 150 different hulls, according to the researchers' experiments, to finally arrive at the ideal shape. On several giant models, sensors are installed to measure the resistance of the water at a given speed, a process that has existed for several decades, but that is probably seeing its final days. This is because the results obtained by the computer are astounding. For the first time, the figures given by computer calculations are just as precise as those measured by the sensors of the model. And it is not just the hull of the Meraviglia that benefits from this innovation. It is also the propellers. Known as the weights, they are the second revolution of the Meraviglia. They are responsible for advancing the enormous mass of the ship. Monsters of steel, about 20 meters high, coupled with gigantic propellers. They have a propulsion power that has never been seen on a ship like this one. Combining speed, new perspectives in travel and increased comfort of passengers, they are the future of cruise liners. The Meraviglia is at the forefront of this formidable revolution. Miquel Legal is the man who will run the test of the Meraviglia at sea. The addition of these mobile propellers offers him a smoothness and control never seen before. Each of the two electric motors produces 20 million watts, the equivalent of 7,000 washing machines, the highest electric power ever produced for a propeller of this size. On the lower rear part, a wing controls the direction. Powered by the engine, the propellers drive the liner forward with a maximum speed of 25 knots, an impressive feat for a ship of 80,000 tons, the equivalent of nearly 6,000 buses. But this is not their only feature. They also give the ship incredible maneuverability. The result? The Meraviglia will be able to dock in ports that would have been impossible with the old style of propellers, a real plus for the passengers. Another innovation is the automatic control of the engine power, which has been improved by the engineers, to avoid any risk of catastrophe as seen here. A cruise ship more than a few years ago, with 4,000 passengers, leaves a small port on the coast of Messina in Italy. The captain has apparently not measured the power of his pods. The port experiences giant waves, destroying several ships. The damage costs several hundred thousand euros. In addition to their power, these new generation propellers allow for fluidity of navigation. There are almost no vibrations felt on the ship. The result? Cruising at speed does not bother the passengers on the ship. But the pods are not the only ones to provide energy to the Meraviglia. Four diesel engines on the ship act as a power station. The Meraviglia, with its 2,500 cabins, casinos, theatres and other leisure facilities, is very energy intensive. If you add to that the energy consumption of the 7,000 people living on board, it's clear there are very different needs to meet. The pods, as well as the four engines manufactured by subcontractors, were transported here to the construction dock where the assembly was carried out. The floors of the ship that have been assembled are brought here to this 900-metre construction zone. Like a giant's construction game, the blocks are stacked on top of each other. It is impossible to imagine this without this machine that allowed them to be moved. The large gantry crane, called the TGP, is the largest lifting machine in all of Europe. A giant weighing over 5,000 tonnes, the equivalent of 10 A380 airplanes, a structure made of ultra-resistant steel at 100 metres high. At maximum capacity, it can lift nearly 1,200 tonnes. The Meraviglia would not exist without it. For this ship, with the old portic, we would have had to make a hundred blocks, and not all of them wide, cut in half. So we would have lost productivity, we would have lost time. The portic has allowed us to save several weeks, or even less, of docking time. It's just an exceptional tool. The first block we lay is generally a block at the bottom, about in the middle of the ship. And then we put a block in front, a block behind, a block on top, and little by little we go up in a pyramid, until we assemble about fifty blocks. This giant moving bridge works with two carriages. In each of the carriages, two lifting systems are positioned at the ends. In each lifting system, there is a single 1,400-metre-long cable that is lengthened or retracted to raise or lower the load as required. Each of the cables passes through a lifting beam, which makes it possible to adjust its length to the nearest centimetre. At the other end of the cable, five anchoring points are attached. Once the four lifting beams are connected to the gigantic structure, it is lifted a few centimetres, and the balancing of the entire structure is done at this precise moment. Once the balance is perfect, the block is lifted, moved over to the construction zone and then placed on the ship. High-precision manoeuvring. On the ground, the slingers direct the operation. They give precise indications to the gantry crane operator so that the gigantic structures fit perfectly together. Perched 100 metres above the action, Jacques Perri is the pilot of the gantry crane. He has been working on these construction sites for 16 years. Thanks to its very easy handling, the gantry crane takes less than three hours for a block of more than 1,000 tonnes to fit perfectly into another. It took only nine months for the Meraviglia to take its definitive form, but although it is fast, it is not as fast as the Meraviglia. Manoeuvring these mountains of steel is still dangerous for the workers underneath. Jacques Perri has no margin of error when he's moving a giant block with a simple joystick. The blocks assembled by the gantry crane were lifted a few metres away in a hangar over 900 metres long. This building is entirely dedicated to welding the 300,000 pieces of sheet metal. This is a stage where workers are needed to replace the less skilled machines. Marianique has been a welder on the building sites for five years. For the Meraviglia, everything must be extremely precise. Yet other welds can look perfect, but conceal serious imperfections because the metal can change shape or retract. These welding problems are difficult to detect and become much more serious when the liner is already in place. Sometimes it breaks. It breaks just above the crack. That's where there was the highest temperature. And so it breaks here, and you can only see afterwards. These two tools, at the end of the day, are placed on top of each other, and we just added a metal that melts a very small layer, which is basically like glue. And so it's true that if it breaks, it can crack. There are tons and tons of metal. So it's true that a crack will continue until it finds an end. But the problem is that it can make kilometres of cracks. So that can be very, very serious. And so the security checks are extremely strict. The assembled sheets become increasingly sophisticated as the first fittings are added. 1,500 kilometres of cable will be concealed in the ceilings of these panels. The aim is to assemble the blocks that are already equipped, with maximum functionality. This saves a considerable amount of time compared with assembling the floors of the ship and then equipping them. But this strategy is only effective thanks to the gantry crane that dominates the port. Investing in this 30 million euro steel giant was a superb choice for the shipyards in Saint-Nazaire. Coupled with the giant assembly dock that allows the construction of two ships, it has made Saint-Nazaire the most efficient shipyard in Europe and one of the quickest in the world. Only around 40 months are needed for each giant of the seas. But it is also the research programmes and technological innovations developed by the shipyards' engineers that seduce the owners of the Meraviglia. For example, these gigantic openings at the level of the bulb. These are the bow propellers of the Meraviglia. Installed at the front of the ship, these propellers direct it and, coupled with the pods at the back, increase the manoeuvrability of the liner even more. ...as much as possible at the front of the ship to increase the torque they will generate on the boat to make it turn. Having a hole in the hull is synonymous with a loss of resistance. You have to know that an unoptimized hole can cause a loss of about 10% in terms of resistance, which is huge. So we make sure that we have a good interaction or a good connection between the hull and the side propellers to minimize their footprint and resistance. On a liner like the Meraviglia, there are two ways to manage the water. Taming the water on the outside of the ship so that it doesn't slow it down and also managing the water on board. This is a major challenge for a floating city. 7,000 cruise passengers and crew are going to live there for many weeks. Between the swimming pools, passenger showers and ship maintenance, an average of 200 cubic meters of water per person per day is required, which means 1.4 million cubic meters of water have to be produced daily, the equivalent of 5,600 baths of drinking water per day. It isn't possible to store the amount of water needed for each week of a cruise. In addition, to consume as little fuel as possible, the vessel must try to keep its weight as low as possible. This water will be stored near the engines. The heat released is such that the thousands of cubic meters pumped in from the sea end up boiling. Steam then forms, and this seawater, which has become freshwater, will be recovered in tanks. From 100 litres of salt water, 30 litres of distilled water is obtained, thanks to the system developed for the Meraviglia. Steam forms, condenses, and distilled water is recovered. It is then transferred to mineralisers, like a conventional water treatment plant, and water is produced. This process will be increasingly used by ship owners, as transforming this seawater into drinking water uses the heat of the engines, which is both an economical and non-polluting technology. The heat is free, in fact. The engines that produce electricity, like your car engine, produce heat, and it is this heat that, instead of being dispersed in the atmosphere, as it is for a car, or dispersed in a water circuit and a radiator, this heat is used. But this method cannot meet all the needs of a cruise. You have to go to the sea regularly, because if you want to make quality fresh water, you need quality seawater. And so it is impossible for the ship to collect clean water in a port. The engineers in San Azea have responded to this challenge. When the Meraviglia is docked for several days, another system takes over, a high-performance membrane, a sort of giant filter that is so sensitive it can separate salt from water. These machines, called osmosis, with their incredible water-filtering membrane, are a solution for small quantities of water, but only the boilers are capable of producing the 1,400,000 cubic metres of water each day that the ship requires during a cruise. The quality of the ocean water is a major environmental issue. The Meraviglia must comply with strict international guidelines when releasing its water into the sea. It is treated to not add any more pollution to the ocean's water supply. The Meraviglia is a ship that is not yet planned to go to Alaska. And yet the plant that is on board today is capable of processing used water and rejecting water of such quality that it could be rejected in Alaska. Another problem that could arise is the potential transportation of harmful species on the ship. Mathieu Lerange works on environmental issues at the Saint-Nazaire shipyards. On board the ship, there are boxes that are dedicated to the ship's ballasting, which means that we need to fill or empty them depending on the different conditions on board. The quantity of fuel and its distribution throughout the ship varies throughout the journey. The engineers have found a way to counter this and maintain a steady balance on the ship. Ballasts. This water could contain species that are dangerous to the natural balance of sensitive regions, like the Mediterranean, not to mention bacteria hidden in the water from other seas. Ultraviolet light is actually used twice in this way to kill bacteria on cruise liners, a security measure that is enforced by the authorities just as the treatment of fumes that are released into the air. We will send dirty fumes into the atmosphere, which are simply diesel engines, and we will send them through facilities and into wash towers, in a way, where they will be washed at sea. And they will come out with a certain number of less sulfur and chemical compounds. The fuel used by the Medevilla and all cruise liners is a heavy fuel of poor quality that is usually quite polluting. Cruise operators have therefore been asking research laboratories to develop a system that can limit this air pollution as much as possible, in particular, the large amount of sulfur that is present in the smoke emitted by the chimneys. The Medevilla takes full advantage of this research with the scrubbers, a kind of giant shower designed to limit the pollutants released into the air. They alone remove 97% of the sulfur oxide emitted by the liners' diesel engines. The scrubbers are responsible for trapping toxic fumes by mixing them with seawater before they escape through the chimneys. The sulfur is mixed with a special solution. Once neutralized, the mud-like result is stored on the ship and then unloaded onto land to be treated. Polluting waste is a major problem for the environment but can also be one for the passengers. In the design specification for the Medevilla, the ship owner wanted to optimize as much open air space as possible for the customers, the aim being to gain as much space as possible on the deck of the ship. The walks on the bridge and the tanning sessions by the pools are the most popular activities for the Medevilla. A computer simulates the trajectories of the gas leaving the chimneys of the liner. From these results, the exhaust chimneys of the Medevilla have been inclined in such a way to avoid the fumes falling back into the liner. There have also been openings made in the chimneys so that the air that enters cools the gases as it is difficult to control where hot gas falls. By lowering their temperature with cold air, the fumes, that are often foul-smelling, no longer surround the decks of the ship. Measurements are constantly being taken in the areas where holidaymakers like to walk. The comfort and the safety of the passengers come first. But the gases produced by the engines are not the only consideration on the decks of the liners. To simulate all types of wind, a computer is also used to calculate the air penetration on the ship, as well as the corridors the wind can blow down. The shape of the ship, combined with protective systems such as large panels, is optimised so that the wind takes different routes, far from the holidaymakers. We must ensure that all the exterior decks are optimised and that the screens are well placed to ensure optimal comfort on all decks. That is why we carry out aerodynamic studies to optimise the location of the screens on all the exterior decks, in order to reduce the relative wind as much as possible, which can be very important. To offer their guests the pleasure of sailing on the open sea, miles away from the mainland, with no inconveniences, is the challenge for the Meraviglia, and the passenger experience must be flawless. With this in mind, and to combat the terrible sensation of seasickness, another innovation has transformed the experience on this cruise ship. A process that is invisible for the passengers, yet very impressive when viewed from underwater, where the ship benefits from huge stabilisers, like airplane wings, measuring an impressive 17 square metres each. The stabilisers are positioned about half way around the ship, and when the ship leaves the harbour, they open the stabilisers. They are wing profiles, like airplane wings, and they orient themselves as the ship rolls. They generate a force that is opposed to this rolling movement, and they somehow stabilise this movement. When the ship is in the harbour, the stabilisers are in the entry position, otherwise there will be a problem with the position of the keel. So in the harbour, below six knots, the stabilisers are usually in the entry position. By limiting the vibrations of certain parts of the ship, or the effects of rolling, the new giants of the sea, such as the Meraviglia, do all they can to eliminate every annoyance, starting with seasickness. The 80,000 tonne ship can finally leave the assembly dock. A total of six million hours of work are needed to construct the Meraviglia. Today is the beginning of testing, and the start-up of the engines. To begin with, they have to fill the dock where it was assembled, to transfer the giant to another part of the site, just a few hundred metres away. An important moment for the ship. When the ship starts to float, we will try to ensure a certain waterproofing of the ship. We will make sure that all the compartmenting is intact, and then we will start to put into service the first safety systems of the ship, the drying pumps, in case there is a waterway, and then, little by little, we will start to ensure the safety of the floating ship. That's the first step. It's when the ship, the metalwork, turns into a boat, when Archimedes starts to do his job. And there it goes. The ship is floating for the first time, and starts to leave the assembly dock. This can only happen when the tidal coefficient is at its highest, and the weather conditions are as calm as possible. At this stage, the ship is still an inert giant, with no functioning motor. It has to be towed. The liner is not going on a long trip, but it has definitely left its assembly dock for another, which does not have a gantry crane. The Medevillia settles into its new home. Although from the outside it may look ready, inside, the workers of the Saint-Nazaire shipyard continue their work day and night. The liner is far from being finished. The 2,500 rooms, the restaurants, cinemas and nightclubs are not yet ready to welcome the first passengers. Thousands of workers and craftsmen labour each day to ensure the all-important deadline is met. As these numerous workers fulfil their roles, simultaneously, the technical teams begin work on a crucial stage of the construction. The computers are turned on. We can now check that the Medevillia reacts perfectly to the detection of a fire, for example. A fire can break out at any time during the construction phase, but a fire that starts while the ship is at sea can quickly become a catastrophe. In the event of a fire, we continue to have electricity and servitude in the other sections of the vessel. There's a great deal of redundancy that ensures that we continue to deliver services, even if a major incident has occurred. There's insulation everywhere. Behind the ceilings and the locks, everything is insulated. Whether it's a fire or a sound, but the whole bridge and the locks are insulated. Noise pollution is one of the major challenges in the construction of new-generation cruise liners. In addition to the propellers developed for the Meraviglia, which considerably reduce noise pollution compared to other ships in the same category, at the heart of the ship, the insulation work is extensive. One of the criteria for the passengers' perceived comfort is noise and vibration. It's extremely important. If the passenger constantly hears a noise or feels the propellers vibrate, he won't feel comfortable, he won't be able to rest. So we work a lot on the ship's acoustics, by either installing a floating ground system, by insulating the noise sources, by installing sound insulation everywhere, so that when the passenger is in his cabin, he doesn't have to hear the cabin next door or a constant ventilation noise. When he's in a restaurant, he doesn't have to hear the noise from the engines or the noise from the kitchen next door. One of the main criteria for luxury on a ship is its silence and its comfort. Tests in the fitting-out basin are not enough. A real outing at sea is required to properly assess the ship. And so the Meraviglia is going to leave the shipyard to face reality. In the end, we're going to try to put the ship in a nominal cruising configuration at sea. So we're going to go, for example, at full speed, in a fairly classic sea state, and then we're going to go through all the cabins and then we're going to measure the thresholds. We're going to measure the noise in the cabins. Not the noise generated by the speech, but the noise generated by the ambient noise. And then we have to stay below a certain threshold. In the same way, in terms of vibration, we're going to put sensors, small piezoelectric sensors, in different places on the ship, in different test nets, at different angles. And then we're going to see how the ship vibrates. It's mainly by using the equipment. And when you have a vibrating pipe, you can imagine that if between the support and the pipe you put a piece of rubber or a cushioning piece, it's not going to make any noise. So we avoid, in a very simple way, metal-to-metal contacts with decoupling systems. During these tests at sea, extreme manoeuvres are carried out and the behaviour of the ship, its stopping distance and its turning radius are assessed, even if the ship's intelligence system limits the possibility of going too far in these tests. We're going to push the engines quite a bit. We're going to do tests that we don't always do. We're going to imagine that we have four engines in service and then suddenly we're going to put an emergency stop on one engine. Then we're going to see how the other engines recharge. There are automatic de-launching systems, because we imagine that if the four engines are charged and we automatically stop one engine, there can be a number of problems on board. So the system will respond quite quickly. It will cut off electric consumers on board. It will try to regulate the charge. So today we have a relatively intelligent ship. It's not like back in the day when, before accelerating, we'd ask the chief mechanic to put in one more engine. Now the system reacts automatically. The Medevillia has reached the final straight. Inside, the finishing touches have been carefully added, all whilst keeping a close eye on the schedule. With €100,000 of penalty for each day it is delayed, the Saint-Nazaire shipyards have been watching the clock very, very closely, as they do for the delivery of each liner. The delay is extremely important for our armateurs. He's been selling cruises on this deck for six months. So it's out of the question for him that he loses one, two or three weeks of operation. The delivery date is sacred and we have to stick to it. Every time we build a new series of ships, we have the impression that we've made the biggest and that we'll never make it bigger. And every time we have customers who push us to do more, who push us to make it bigger, to make it even more impressive for the passengers. We've taken industrial bets, technological bets, and when we see that it works, we're super happy. The Medevilla is not yet out of the shipyards and yet already a new series of liners is under construction. Following its lead, and thanks to the numerous studies that were carried out to make this ground-breaking cruise liner, the new ships built on the shipyard will follow the path of innovation and environmental protection. It's true that we want our ships to be more and more economical, more and more ecological, more and more connected. The two key words for me will be green, greener ships, why not sailboats. I think it's something that will be important for the passengers in the years to come, including in the geographical areas in which the ships will have to evolve with increasingly strong environmental requirements. Then it's like going home. Today we are a generation that is used to being connected, so the ship should be connected. This ever-present desire to innovate, as seen with the Medevilla, will lead to bigger and bigger ships being built in the future. Less environmental waste, widespread electric propulsion and ultimately no more diesel engine at the very heart of the liner, even more efficient water management, solar panels that are able to operate an entire ship. The challenges to come over the next few decades have definitely not finished transforming these so-called giants of the sea.