Winners of Student Ferry Design Contest Announced
August 5, 2024

The first-place award winning design (Image: WFSA)
The Worldwide Ferry Safety Association (WFSA) announced the awardees for the 11th Annual Student Competition for a Safe Affordable Ferry. Winning teams receive monetary awards and are invited to speak about their work at an international conference; this year- the venue will be Interferry’s 48th annual conference, to be held in Marrakesh on October 28-29, 2024. 
For this year's WFSA competition, the Terms of Reference (TOR) called for a RoPax vessel to accommodate 150-200 passengers, as well as space for cargo and 15-20 four-wheeler vehicles, which could include lorries and trucks. The vessel is intended to ply a shallow-drafted stretch of the Niger River in southern Nigeria’s Anambra State, from Onitsha Jetty to Idah Jetty and from Onitsha Jetty to Ndoni Jetty.  
The first-place award winning team from Sepuluh Nopember Institute of Technology, ITS Surabaya, designed an aluminum catamaran powered by CNG with alternative power sources including solar and batteries.  The vessel is 50 m in length with a displacement of 209.6 tons with an estimated cost of $2.7 million.*
The second-place award winning team is from the Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology in Dhaka.  The design is for an aluminum catamaran hull, 40m length, 142 tons would cost around $0.8 million.  The main fuel is CNG to run the electric motor, with solar power supplements.  Judges considered the concept of a tiltable propeller system as brilliant and the hydrokinetic turbine as interesting.  

The second-place award winning design (Image: WFSA)
The third-place award winning team is from Universitas Indonesia in Jakarta.  Their steel barge hull design with the precut fabrication technique clearly reduces the cost of production, estimated at $1.5 million.  The vessel is powered by diesel-CNG with solar power supplement.  There would be fore and aft loading. The tilt up thrustmaster is good for maintenance and repair.

The third-place award winning design (Image: WFSA)

Source: https://www.marinelink.com/news/winners-student-ferry-design-contest-515692
Also published in BUET Shangbadik Somity's Facebook https://www.facebook.com/buetshangbadikshomiti