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Writer's pictureM A Hannan

Supervised Students Win First Prize in the International Ferry Design Competition

Updated: Aug 19, 2020

A team of students from our Singapore campus have won the Sixth International Ferry Safety Design Competition. The successful students are part of the inaugural cohort of the new Joint Degree Programmes between Newcastle University and the Singapore Institute of Technology, and members of staf from both institutions are very proud of their achievement. This is the second year in a row that the Newcastle University-led team has won this prestigious international prize, going up against students from numerous countries such as the Indonesia, India, Mexico, the Netherlands and China. The Singapore team was inspired by a workshop at the Overseas Immersion Programme at Newcastle in July 2018 delivered by Dr Mohammed Abdul Hannan and Dr Ivan Tam.

Dr Hannan's student win ferry design competion

The team of third year marine BEng students, Jawahar Vinoth, Daniel Sukartio and Qimiao Lin, led by Dr Abdul Hannan, will present their winning ferry design “M/V Pasig Express” at the Ferry Safety & Technology 2019 Conference held in Bangkok on 20 Feb 2019. They are expected to graduate in September 2019.


The Design Competition this time was for a Safe Affordable Ferry carrying 100-passenger in the Pasig River of Manila, Philippines as a linear urban ferry, an increasing popular type of ferry system in the progressively urbanizing world. The winning design, MV Pasig Express, is an aluminum hulled catamaran, with hybrid propulsion which enables minimized energy consumption when operating at slow speeds and when berthing. The fin propeller reduces cavitation, as well as lowering noise (and reducing the wake). Importantly, the design speaks to the challenges identified by Dr. Weisbrod: a debris and vegetation collector protects the propulsion system against fouling, saving energy and maintenance costs and helping restore cleanliness to the river. This unique debris collector is called Malinis which means “clean” in Tagalog. Safety looms large in the design; the vessel features three level fire protection, and egress through six points of escape (including exit doors on both sides of the craft).


This annual ferry design competition is organized by the Worldwide Ferry Safety Association (WFSA), a notfor-profit organization based in the United States. The purpose of this competition is to generate innovative designs and new ideas for safe and affordable vessels for the improvement of global ferry safety.


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