Freight accommodation on freight carrier – Load lashing retainer or load lashing adjunct – Anchor
Reexamination Certificate
2002-07-11
2003-12-23
Gordon, Stephen T. (Department: 3612)
Freight accommodation on freight carrier
Load lashing retainer or load lashing adjunct
Anchor
C410S096000, C410S082000, C410S101000, C410S102000, C410S103000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06666635
ABSTRACT:
STATEMENT REGARDING FEDERALLY SPONSORED RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT
Not Applicable
BACKGROUND OF INVENTION
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the method of using an apparatus, a bar which is a beam to lash cargo to, herein called the cargo lash to bar, for fastening and restraining cargo to a transport vessel or vehicle, especially as used in lashing down mobile equipment to the deck of an intermodal cargo carrying roll-on/roll-off ocean going ship known as a RoRo, or for fastening to a tanker ship's weather deck.
2. Description of the Related Art
The transportation of cargo is increasingly geared to intermodal and unitized handling. Most ships are equipped for intermodal shipping that consists primarily of freight containers that are eight feet high, eight feet wide, and twenty feet long. This standard is referred to as a TEU or twenty foot equivalent unit and is particularly evident in the international ISO 668 specification. Many variety of containers, and flatracks have been developed for transport of lumber and liquid tanks, and are just two examples of intermodal freight handling equipment that maintain the TEU although height of specialty containers frequently varies. The intermodal nature of freight containers makes them readily usable without adaptation or modification for transport over sea, over land by trucking, or by rail. Mobile equipment and other break bulk cargo are frequently transported on vessels designed to carry intermodal cargo.
Currently when an armored tank or other irregular shaped mobile equipment is loaded on the deck of a ship which is designed for a variety of cargo including intermodal freight containers, the mobile equipment will be chained down and connected to a socket in the deck. Current cargo restraint lashing rigging consists of D-rings welded to a ship's deck and D-rings welded to twist lock bases, breech bases, clover leaf bases, dovetail bases or other commercially available or proprietary locking mounting bases for mounting a lashing line to corresponding deck sockets. U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,457,650 and 3,860,209 illustrate the styles of fastening rings, cavities, and sockets and the various bases types which are used to fasten to a ship's deck. All of these embodiments suffer from the same problem, that they mount and seat into the sockets built into the deck that are spaced too far apart for convenient, safe, and secure
Spacing of these sockets is usually substantially twenty feet (or forty feet) apart fore and aft and two adjacent eight feet across athwartship in a configuration reciprocal to the mounting of an intermodal freight container. As a result the cargomen who are stevedores, longshoremen, and ship's crew are frequently faced with the problem on the ship of inadequate tie down locations adjacent to the designated fastening points of most mobile equipment. The result is multiple chains being stretched at odd angles to reach a single mounting location on the deck. This aggravates the problems of lashing and can lead to lashing gear, D-ring, or deck sockets and bases breaking or tearing with the equipment dangerously coming loose at sea. Often the twist lock sockets or D-rings are covered by cargo or wheels or tracks of a piece of mobile equipment, which must be accommodated by lashing to a farther point and putting extra shear load on a neighboring D-ring or omitting a lashing entirely.
In some locations on ships, D-rings are welded to a ship's deck generating different problems. Welding to the deck is a permanent attachment which can be an encumbrance later on and be an obstruction for man and machines that causes a safety hazard. Also, dragging a welder and all of it's equipment around a ship's deck to weld down and retrofit individual D-rings or repair broken D-rings is slow and labor intensive. Welding is a severe optical hazard to ship's crew about the deck. Welding also heats the metal of the deck in excess of 3,000 degrees F., which causes localized changes in the crystal structure of the base metal making it brittle and reducing the strength. A ship's deck cannot be readily annealed. Weld on D-rings are not able to be welded to the lower deck of most ships because the bottom side of the lower deck is the fuel hold or fuel tank. To weld to the lower deck requires the costly procedure of evacuating the space with an inert gas or risking major fire or explosion.
The erectable secondary deck shown in U.S. Pat. No. 4,329,935 of Jonasson using twist locks and taking advantage of the regular spacing of twist lock mounting apertures in the deck of a ship displays the practicality of the present invention to take advantage of the same regularly ordered twist lock socket apertures.
Folding flatracks of the type shown in U.S. Pat. No. 5,398,832 of Clive-Smith reveal the great need for versatile lashing of cargo so that cargo will securely endure a voyage aboard a waterborne vessel. Clive-Smith discloses an improved flatrack with d-rings for lashing cargo to keep a load fastened to the flatrack wherein the lashing chain begins, ends, and is brought taught by a binder as an internal force to the flatrack. That is to say that cargo native to the flatrack is held fast to the flatrack. The present invention on the other hand provides a new cargo lashing apparatus for lashing cargo to which has a completely different mode of functionality from Clive-Smith, wherein an external force is applied to the apparatus of the present invention and an object external to the cargo lash to bar is restrained to the deck of a ship. Clive-Smith is beneficial to the understanding of the great difficulty in facilitating the safe and secure arrival of cargo aboard the modern intermodal ships. These are new solutions to the broad array of challenges that shippers face in these days of intermodal cargo movement.
The versatility of the twist lock sockets apertures at their respective regular spacing as an erection attachment point is further evidenced by the novel portable hand rail of Bel, U.S. Pat. No. 4,655,153. As with the previous citation, the preponderance of examples show that the deck sockets can be utilized far beyond simple freight containers. All these however fail to grasp the enormity of the advantage to be gained in cargo fastening, restraining, and securing of the present invention.
People in the mobile equipment shipping industry are clear, there is a lot of money being spent shoreside for load preplanning and logistical processes to make efficient stowage but when mobile equipment cargo arrives onboard the ship it is not loaded according to the plan because of the impediments of the use of old style lashing gear exacerbating the problems of inadequate deck tie down lashing points. That serious difficulty of consistent, safe, and secure lashing of mobile equipment cargo is clearly enunciated in U.S. MTMCTEA Ref 97-55-22 Marine Lifting and Lashing Handbook on page 1-1, which says, “As we saw during Desert Shield/Storm, this often leads to inconsistent and excessive lashing procedures that wastes time, money, and manpower hours”.
BRIEF SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
The cargo lash to bar is a beam which is a continuous structural member that can be fastened and unfastened to a ship's deck and quickly handled aboard a ship to facilitate multiple convenient and accessible lashing point apertures along the length of the span of the member to ensure secure cargo lashing and restraining especially of irregular shaped loads. The key to the application of the present invention is the use of standard twist lock bolt connections. Such twist locks are commercially available in a variety of mounting base configurations. The cargo lash to bar is constructed to use a standard twist lock rotating locking bolt connections at each end of the bar for releasable locking to its mounting locking surface. These twist locks are an integral part of a RoRo ship's current inventory of lashing gear. The cargo lash to bar comes with the mounting apertures in its mounting locking surface on the bottom, th
Elkinton Virgil S.
Holt Anthony J.
Gordon Stephen T.
Zovko Mark
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