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Babcock has revealed a new and innovative warship transport technique pioneered by the company’s engineers.
“Sandboxes” have been used by Babcock’s naval architect team as an innovative approach to efficiently and effectively transport the decommissioned HMAS Anzac from its docking place to a final location for disposal.
Instead of resurfacing the vessel, which was ultimately ruled out due to time and cost inefficiency, sandboxes were proposed as a two-part solution to transporting the 3,500-tonne frigate.
“This project demonstrates the depth of our engineering capability and our commitment to empowering teams to innovate,” said Simon Spratt, Babcock Australasia’s managing marine director.
Sandboxes use sand to bear the load and evenly distribute weight to stabilise the heavy mass of the vessel while in transit.
This method was found to be two-thirds cheaper than traditional transport methods, significantly quicker and overall more effective.
Moving HMAS Anzac was broken into two relocation endeavours.
First was transporting the vessel from its original docking point at the Frigate Laydown Area in the Australian Marine Complex’s Common User Facility to a temporary harvesting site. This saw a safe lift and positioning of the vessel onto the 68 sandboxes created and installed.
The second stage of the move saw a turnover of just six weeks for the final disposal site to be installed with 68 additional sandboxes to hold the ship.
Babcock said the whole process was a “feat of both engineering and collaboration” and that this paves the way for future docking and transport approaches to frigates.
“Designing and implementing a sandbox solution for an Anzac Class frigate had never been attempted before,” Spratt said.
“Working with millimetre tolerances, complex load calculations, and demanding conditions, our engineers delivered a fully assured design in just six weeks.”
The workforce and physical efforts of workers within this project was also recognised by Babcock, highlighting the inclusion of graduate engineers who gained real-life practical experience through this.
“Through close collaboration with SMEs and Defence stakeholders, we turned a highly technical challenge into a proven solution, which is a testament to the precision, resilience and ingenuity that define Babcock’s engineering culture,” Spratt added.
