Hepburn
During my co-op at Hepburn Engineering, I worked as a Mechanical Engineer in their Replenishment at Sea (RAS) department. RAS is the process of transferring solids or liquids between two ships while underway on open water. Hepburn specializes in delivering custom RAS solutions for naval supply ships, supporting the full lifecycle of the replenishment systems—from design and manufacturing to onsite commissioning.
At Hepburn, I was tasked with redesigning a flounder plate—a critical shackle mechanism used in solids transfer between naval ships, where loads up to 2.5 tons are transferred across a tensioned line, similar to a high-load zipline. The flounder plate serves as the central connecting piece between two tensioned ropes—one from the supply ship and one from the receiving vessel. The connection is completed by mating an end fitting, which secures the system to the supply ship. A key operational constraint is that the flounder plate must be pre-armed before deployment, as once the end fitting is installed, the mechanism becomes physically inaccessible.
The existing flounder plate required two operators and used an external spring-loaded multi-linkage system that was cumbersome and hazardous to arm. To address this, I designed a safer, single-operator solution using a yoke-slider mechanism with internally sprung linkages. This design allows the flounder plate to remain in an armed state while still able to receive and securely clamp onto the end fitting during deployment. The mechanism supports a single-step arming procedure and a two-step disarming process, improving both safety and ease of use. I also upgraded the structural capacity to handle increased loads of up to 247 kN, aligning with new naval performance requirements. For an idea of naval replisment, see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CyPT4mRvoKM&ab_channel=NavyLookout