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W marcu 1976 r. w Wyższej Szkole Morskiej w Szczecinie na krajowym sympozjum nawigacji na temat „Wykorzystanie sztucznych satelitów w nawigacji i kartografii" podniesiono potrzebę interdyscyplinarnych badań z wykorzystaniem badań w zakresie nauk morskich.

The development of operating strategy has been presented, and the need to optimize the operation of vessel machines has been stressed. The achievements of the author's team in the scope of operation development and training have been presented.

The development of aviation and space technologies has made it necessary' to work out new materials, resistant to elevated temperatures, meeting requirements particularly in the range of high strength and low density. These requirements have been met by metal composites created by a suitable linking of the matrix of aluminium or magnesium alloys and reinforcing elements, mostly ceramic, in the form of fibres, particles or whiskers. Material thus composed is characterized by a set of properties difficult to attain in the case of classical materials. The theoretical bases of the research area -material engineering - permit the creation of composite materials with properties conformed to the designer's needs. These materials have become the predominant factor of progress in transport widely conceived, particularly land and air transport, and also in medicine, in the production of sports and recreational equipment etc. Metal composite materials on the base of aluminium, alloys have found particularly wide application in the production of diesel engines for the motor trade, gearbox casings, crankshafts, suspension elements and other construction elements, thus contributing to lowering the complete vehicle kerb weight, which results in the decrease of fuel consumption. These materials have also made it possible to introduce construction changes in diesel engines, permitting a decrease in the emission of harmful fuel exhaust components. Material that was created on the base of aluminium composites reinforced with ceramic particles, is metal foam of low density. It finds particular application in the motor industry, as the filling of structures subject to destruction in the crumple zone, becoming, as an excellent energy absorber, an essential factor in constructing safe cars.

Marine traffic engineering is a relatively new scientific specially, which emerged inn the 70's. The Polish school of marine traffic engineering arose in Szczecin 30 years ago, where the Institute of Marine Traffic Engineering was created, preoccupied with these problems. The article presents selected problems of marine traffic engineering, such as: — safety assessment of navigation in restricted areas, — optimizing of waterway parameters, — designing pilot navigational systems.

Ship structures can be designed using probabilistic methods for reliability analysis. It is possible, as the random process of ship motion in waves is well recognized. Ship and offshore structures are very complex and susceptible to environment and human activity. For this reason the connections between the events causing damages are complex and lead to the application of computer simulation methods in the reliability analysis.

The pollution level of the marine environment, landlocked seas in particular, has made it necessary to search for more effective techniques and technologies of limiting pollution generated by ships. Further elimination of oil pollution in dumping waters has been focused on in the recent period. Oil dumped in bilge waters is estimated to have a significant 20% share in the total amount of oil getting into the seas. This fact settles the issue of the important role bilge water separators on ships. The content of oil pollution in dumping waters can be restricted to even below 5 ppm, supporting traditional deoil-ing systems with ultrafiltration techniques. On the basis of research conducted, possibilities of restricting pollution in depending waters have been shown, depending on the kind of membranes applied.

The paper points out ways of ship propulsion developments after the year 2000, analysing the possibilities of gas turbine application for ship's propulsion, as well as the design of propulsion plants systems fulfilling safety and marine environmental aspects. The last chapter of the paper gives a general description of the introduction into the operation of an electrical motor working in the range of superconductivity by the Japanese Co. IHI. A brief characteristics of this epoch-making achievement is made

The paper presents analysis results based on cases of power plant system damage from 10 ships, registered during a voyage lasting about six months on the average. For the verification of the hypothesis that they stem from one population, or to put it in a different way, that they can be treated as realisations of the same random trial, Kruskal- Wallis ranks sum test was applied. The test was carried out both for the moments of successive damage and for the time intervals for successive installation damage. For the verification of the hypothesis about the conformity of the empirical distribution with selected four distributions: exponential, Weibull's, log-normal and gamma distribution for the analysed power plant installations, the Kolmogorov-Smirnov goodness of fit test was used.

Increasing accuracy of weather forecasts for ocean areas (wave factors, limits of ice), development of communication means, receiving and computations of navigational and weather information (satellite communication, computer programming) as well as development of theoretical basics of optimization and decision making process permit operational computations of optimal routes for ships on the oceans. Using dynamical programming, route selection is made objectively, taking into account dynamical changing weather conditions, ship characteristics and assumed optimization criteria. For computations different types of algorithms may be used: from graph theory, evolutionary algorithms based on genetic algorithms as well as isochrone ones. Following an example of results of ships voyages recommended by Polish Steamship Company routing centre, 3% of time voyage saving in comparison with seasonal voyages were obtained.

The European Union and the European Space Agency are considering investments amounting to €100 billions until 2010 in the transportation infrastructure of the countries just joining the EU, in order to complement the €400 billions already estimated in 1996, for a Trans-European network of transport infrastructure (TEN-T), The interweaving of the economies along the present European east-west borders is in this scenario a particularly difficult task of high responsibility for the involved actors. The Odra/Oder River, separating - yet - Germany and Poland, is the backbone of such a Trans-European logistics corridor. Problems of inland water navigation are presented in the article. International standards for inland water electronic charts (Inland ECDIS) are presented. At present, no charts in accordance with the Inland ECDIS standard for the Szczecin - Berlin waterway are produced.

Assumotions for the design process of the vessel were prepared by researchers of the Maritime University of Szczecin. She started at the beginning of 1998. Now, she is well equipped and all are being reached.

The reduction of power consumption in the marine power engineering system is a way to decrase the emission of harmful exhaust gases components into the atmosphere, reduction of the vessels' operational costs and decreasing the amount of crude oil waste arising during fuel processing on ships. The solution of this problem can be achieved by maximising the recovery of waste heat from main propulsion diesel engines. The waste heat contained in exhaust gases, supercharging air and cooling water, may be used to increase the amount of electric power produced on the ship, heating energy and the amount of fresh water produced.

The main threat for the environment caused by land transport is pollution in the form of carbon dioxide and toxic compounds in exhaust gases, and also by noise and vibrations. Besides widely applied passive security measuares, at present the main security measuares are focused on active elements, which lead to a deifinite reduction of causes of these treats. Activites thus directed lead to reduced energy consumption and applying new kinds of propulsion which in a large degree lower the negative effect on the environment, like: applying new fuel cells, high-efficiency gas turbines (ceramic blades), or feeding classical diesel engines with hydrogen. An essential actibity trend is the application of hybrid propulsion with recovery of energy from the braking process.

Both in Poland and abroad great interest has been observed in recent years in applying alternative fuels for the feeding of diesel engines. For self-ignition engines such fuels can be pure plant oils or methyl esters procured on their matrix. Yet a comparsion of work parameters of these engines working on plant fuels and crude-oil fuels points out a number of problems connected with the operational properties of biofuels, decrease in engine power and increase in the emission of carbon oxides in exhaust gases. A possible development trend in the application of plant fuels is their initial catalytic processing taking place immediately before spraying the fuel in injector channels, the surface of which catalytic material is laid onto in the from of platinum metals. The reactions of dyhydrogenation takin place then cause the creation of free hydrogen particles, which in turn improves combustion conditions contributing to reduction in fuel consumption and emission of toxic compounds into the surroundings.

The characteristics of intermetals has been presented in the wor, that is alloys on the base ordered intermetallic phases. Intermetals are heat-resisting materials with unique properties intermediate between the properties of metals and ceramics. Their small density, high trength and resistance to oxidation, bound with sufficient plasticity and crack resistance, make them attractive material for machine elements working in elevated temperatures and corrosive surroundings. Based on generalised world research, and also many years' own work, there have been discussed the main interdependences between structure and properties, and the perspectives of futher development and application of intermetals.

The European Union, the European Conference of Transport Ministers and the European Economic Commission of the United Nations have recognized that multimodal transport can create a significant role in creating European policy of balanced transport development.

Ports are designed and constructed for handling ships of definite size. The development of world fleet in the recent thiry year has been marked by a general increase in ships' size with their relativery constant number; which is why ports built a number of years ago are faced with the necessity if handling ever bigger ships. The increase embraces both the length and the width of the ship, as well as her draft. The navigational safety in port water areas is mainly determined by the relation of the ship's dimensions to the dimensions of the water area.

In the years 2000-2002 a grant by the Republic of Poland's Scientific Research Committee was taken advantage of a the Maritime University of Szczecin, on the subject "A New Approach to the Problem of Fire and Electric Shock Threat in Extensive Ship Networks of the IT (Nr 8T10A 030 19) Type"