SHIP REPORT
Motion Compensation
Photo courtesy of Royal Wagenborg
Providing maintenance personnel living on the vessel access to fixed or floating offshore structures is a motioncompensated offshore gangway, the Ampelmann – from the Dutch company of the same name. This fully integrated access system will also be used to transfer small cargo and equipment. The Ampelmann consists of a self-stabilising hexapod with six hydraulic cylinders, which compensate the motion of waves up to 2.5m. The gangway has a maximum operational length of 22m. Lifting operations to transfer equipment from the deck of the vessel onto a platform can be executed safely with a small and compact 3D-neutral crane – the Barge Master T40. With a 5t @ 20m or 15t @ 10m capacity, the crane compensates roll, pitch and heave motions with a system of five vertically mounted cylinders, which are placed between the vessel and the crane. Designed for minimum downtime in tough North Sea conditions, the Barge Master unit is capable of transferring equipment to and from a platform and the deck of the vessel in wave heights up to 2m. “Active heave compensation is used on many cranes on offshore vessels, but the ability to compensate for pitching and rolling motions in addition to heave will be unique, at least in the offshore oil & gas sector,” highlights Mr Klimp. “Ensuring that the hook is stable in all directions really is new.”
Start Me Up At the heart of the new design is a package of ‘cold start-up’ (CSU) and intervention Photo courtesy of Royal Wagenborg
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