Krylov Shipbuilding Research Institute
Contributions to the national shipbuilding

Considering the significance of those tasks of the naval architecture that can be achieved only with the help of R&D capabilities available at the Krylov Institute, its role in the national shipbuilding is truly decisive. Without utilising this or other development of the Krylov Institute, it is virtually impossible to build a single merchant or naval ship or any other sophisticated marine engineering product, to make 'forecasting' studies or to identify the most promising development vectors of the national and the international shipbuilding.

The Krylov Institute started practical work with hullform design for the Osliabia-class armour-clad battleships and engineering design of the first Russian submarine Delfin (supervised by the Senior Assistant to the Model Tank Superintendent I.G.Boubnov). Since then and throughout its over-a-century-long career the Krylov Institute remained the key research organisation in the national shipbuilding industry whenever it came to coping with design or construction engineering problems associated with naval ships, merchant vessels or marine structures, especially those absolutely new for the country. The list of the latter included air-capable ships, large dynamic-lift marine vehicles and ships with power plants unconventional for their days (gas turbines, nuclear plants). Amongst them, was the country's first nuclear-powered submarine (Pr.627). That project started within the Krylov Institute and its initial supervisor was V.N.Peregoudov, then the manager of a major design department and later a Deputy Director for Research. The intellectual potential of the Krylov Institute was directly and explicitly involved in the fact that by early 1990's the country acquired a first-class navy and one of the world-largest fleets of merchant and catching vessels.

During the second half of the twentieth century the Institute:

• Tested over 12,000 models of naval ships, commercial vessels, offshore platforms and other floating structures
• Designed geometry for over 8,500 propellers and other propulsors adapting them to as full as possible utilise the available engine power
• Performed strength and vibration tests of over 20,000 half-size and full-scale hull structures
• Made engineering and service/economic reviews of over 2,000 design packages submitted by shipbuilding design offices, including about 230 submarine designs. For all those projects, the Krylov Institute recommendations modifications that enabled to gain significant enhancements in their service efficiency, cost efficiency and environmental friendliness
• Measures and engineering tools have been developed to ensure quiet operation of submarines and surface ships
• Degaussing systems have been developed for all types of submarines and surface ships
• Nuclear and radiation safety of nuclear-powered ships
• KSRI affiliate CDB Baltsudoproject has produced about 170 designs with 2600 ships of various types (total displacement over 11 million tons) built to these designs
• Data bank of military and commercial shipbuilding standards has been established (KSRI affiliate LOT Research Institute)

Investigations performed at the Krylov Institute have made it possible to increase combat performances, stealth features, speeds and diving depths of the submarines, to achieve fuel and material savings for surface ships and merchant vessels, to improve their seakeeping and propulsive qualities, and to make the operation safer.

The Krylov Institute has also made sizeable contributions to the development of naval weapons, particularly the nuclear ones. Thanks to the achievements of the Krylov Institute, it has become possible to confidently design even those naval and commercial ships for which no previous experience was available in the country (and some times in the entire world). Particularly, those novelty designs were submarines with long-rage cruise missiles, air-capable ships, large missile-launching surface ships, big landing hovercraft, satellite tracking ships, powerful nuclear icebreakers, all-hatch cargo ships, environmental-friendly tankers, river-marine vessels, large freezer trawlers, ocean mineral prospecting ships, jack-up and semi-submersible platforms.

An affiliate of the Krylov Institute, the Baltsudoproject design bureau, is one of the eldest Russian ship design establishments that produced design packages for constructing over 2,600 naval and commercial ships of about 12 million t displacement collectively. Among the 160 practically built designs of the bureau, therewere unique space system support vessels Kosmonavt Yuri Gagarin and Marshal Nedelin, the world's first nuclear-powered lighter-on-board ship Sevmorput, Krym-class 150,000DWT tankers, environment-friendly Pobeda-class 68,000DWT tankers, Jaguar-class ocean rescue ships and many others.

Another affiliate of the Krylov Institute, the Lot research institute, is the principal organisation in the national shipbuilding industry for standardisation, certification and metrology. This institution has generated the Russian stock of regulatory documents (over 3000 titles) relevant for design, construction, operation, repair and disposal of naval and commercial ships and new types of marine equipment. Lot also holds International, European and various national standards of the leading shipbuilding countries. This collection numbers 280 Standards and 150 Draft Standards of ISO and IEC Committees, 50 European Committees, 300 Japan and 150 USA Standards.