Abstract
Oil-lubricated sterntube system is generally used for merchant ships while water-lubricated sterntube system is generally used for passenger ships. Recently, the water-lubricated sterntube system is attracting keen interest from the viewpoint of oil-pollution prevention. Conventional seal used in water-lubricated sterntube system has a drawback in that the sealing ring cannot be easily replaced with a spare. This is a problem in large ships for which on-schedule voyage is strongly required. This paper introduces a new water-lubricated sterntube seal in which the sealing ring can be switched to a spare ring with just a simple valve operation.
