The Importance of Safety of Rubber Fender Quality
We should pay more attention to the importance of safety of rubber fender quality. With the development of China’s shipping industry, more and more demands are made on fenders for wharves and ships, and higher and higher requirements are required for fender performance. The rubber fender is widely used because of its good toughness and impact resistance among them.
At present, there are many rubber fender manufacturers in China, the good and bad are intermingled. In order to survive in the fierce market competition, some manufacturers take low price competition as the main means. If the relevant standards and processes are not strictly followed, low-quality raw materials are used or recycled rubber is used too much to reduce costs, which will bring great risks to the safety of docks and ships. Experts said that rubber fender manufacturers should strictly implement the relevant national standards, strict technological process, enhance independent innovation ability, and constantly improve product quality for China’s shipping industry and shipbuilding industry to provide reliable, safe products.
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Types of rubber fender
It is understood that there are a variety of types of rubber fenders on the market, mainly Cylindrical Rubber Fender, Cell Rubber Fender, Marine Cone Fender, W-type Fender, etc. The manufacturer should be considered in the design and production of rubber fender on the hull and pier by the reaction of ship components, fender absorption ship kinetic energy after deformation, the size of the fender deformation effect in the reaction of the hull of the ship, fender’s relative stiffness, the positive depends on the effectiveness of the fender endergonic, fender makes the ship berthing at a rate of speed reducer, fender system and the coefficient of friction between the hull, fender system and infrastructure investment and maintenance cost of support components, hull and contact way of the fender, and many other factors. Users can choose different types of rubber fenders according to the actual situation. Except for tugboats and small ships, large-tonnage ships are usually not equipped with rubber fenders. The inflatable rubber fender is mainly used to protect the wharf and hull when berthing.
The situation of the rubber fender industry
Compared with the shipbuilding industry of Marine mainframe, shipboard, and other supporting markets, the market capacity of rubber fender is not very large, the competition is very fierce. Lee Haie, deputy general manager of China ocean rubber (Qingdao) industry co., LTD., said that the annual domestic rubber fender market capacity of more than 2 billion Yuan, the number of high visibility manufacturers is less than 4. It is mainly aimed at backbone ports and shipbuilding enterprises, and there are many customized products, so it has a high market share and good benefits.
While some manufacturers with more general products and less profit can only adopt a low price competitive strategy, and even use low-quality materials or a high proportion of recycled rubber to reduce costs, which is common in a region where rubber fender manufacturers gather more. Lee pointed out that the low-quality rubber fender is extremely harmful, not only short service life but also will bring serious damage to the dock and berthing ships once damaged. Song Baoqing, secretary-general of the national technical committee of rubber and rubber products standardization administration, which is responsible for the revision and technical management of rubber faking standards in China, also felt the same way.
The standard of rubber fenders
At present, the solid rubber fender is standard GB/T 21537-2008 cone type rubber fender, and the rubber fender, HG/T 2866-2003, inflatable rubber fender uses is the CB – T 3948 marine pneumatic rubber fenders and ISO17357:2002 “High pressure Floating pneumatic rubber fenders”. As a new product in recent years, there is no international standard or industry standard. Song Baoqing pointed out that all kinds of rubber fender standards in China are not backward compared with foreign countries, but the uneven implementation standards of manufacturers make the good and bad products are intermingled, which brings hidden dangers to the development of China’s shipping industry and shipbuilding industry. She said that adding recycled rubber in the raw materials can better improve the processing performance and meet the requirements of environmental protection. As for how much-recycled rubber will have an adverse impact on product quality and service life, there is no quantitative analysis data, so the use of recycled rubber cannot be simply denied. But there is no doubt that the use of quality raw materials is an important basis for ensuring product quality.
The development of rubber fenders
Experts said that China’s rubber fender manufacturers should closely track the development trend of foreign intelligent fender technology, take the initiative and adopt foreign advanced standards, enhance independent innovation ability, constantly improve product performance and strive to achieve product upgrading. At the same time, we should be self-disciplined, focus on reducing costs and improving product quality, and refrain from cut-price competition. In addition, in compliance with the relevant agreements and provisions of the world trade organization, China should increase the standard of rubber fender revision and implementation of inspection, increase the publicity of the importance of rubber fender quality to the safety of docks and ships, standardize the market order, so that make low quality rubber fender difficult to produce and no market.