Inserts, Protection Systems & Tooling
One of the more complex issues relating to ROV module design is the location and incorporation of metallic inserts. These are usually provided as lifting points or for the attachment of additional equipment. However, they can make a straightforward technical issue extremely complicated unless dealt with correctly at the design stage of an enquiry. We have a significant amount of experience dealing with this.
When working at depths in excess of 3000 metres, ROV reliability is an essential requirement. ROV deepwater buoyancy modules are vulnerable to handling damage, usually during deployment and recovery. Simultaneously applied impact and hydrostatic effects can compromise operational reliability. To address the problem and enhance module strength, a unique 'hard shell' outer skin is incorporated within all of our deepwater ROV buoyancy packs. The 'hard shell' outer skin is homogenous within the composite core and outer layers of the polyurethane elastomer skin. Under a number of recent impact tests the 'hard shell' system proved to be 3 times stronger than a conventional outer skin.
The complexity and weight of remotely operated tooling packages make it extremely difficult during design development to determine the precise amount of buoyancy and its configuration. Most tooling packages have to be, at the very least, neutrally buoyant to enable the ROV to carry and fly equipment subsea without increasing payload.
We have, for many years, successfully designed and fabricated buoyancy systems in this highly specialised field. We understand the dynamics of tooling buoyancy where the slightest change in equipment can lead to massive changes in buoyancy requirement.
We offer a number of buoyancy solutions for tooling packages, for example:
- Composite foam sheets for fabrication to the correct shape by the client or by us
- Moulded or cast syntactic to exact customer specifications
- The use of our Trimsyns - individual syntactic floats attached directly to the equipment