PROJECT:
Conductor Repair Clamp
A SQUARED
make it happen.
Conductors on mature assets in the North Sea are plagued with the development of cracks in way of the subsea guides.
As conductors are generally loose-fitting inside the guides, cracks develop due to cyclic loading and impact on proud weld seams. In an effort to stall the propagation of fatigue cracks on the conductor wall, a standardised design has been developed for a repair clamp that acts as a pair of sacrificial slips that are inserted into the annular gap between the conductor and guide.
When an operator has to make intervention subsea to repair a damaged item of strategically important infrastructure, the design brief is generally a fit and forget solution. A SQUARED were tasked with the modification of a standard design to suit a 28-inch conductor at guide location -15m LAT.
As conductors are generally loose-fitting inside the guides, cracks develop due to cyclic loading and impact on proud weld seams. In an effort to stall the propagation of fatigue cracks on the conductor wall, a standardised design has been developed for a repair clamp that acts as a pair of sacrificial slips that are inserted into the annular gap between the conductor and guide.
When an operator has to make intervention subsea to repair a damaged item of strategically important infrastructure, the design brief is generally a fit and forget solution. A SQUARED were tasked with the modification of a standard design to suit a 28-inch conductor at guide location -15m LAT.
The Solution
The A SQUARED team used their experience in subsea operations to work with the tooling supplier and installation contractor to develop a design that met with the constraints specific to this repair clamp installation. Once the clamp design had been developed to meet client and installation contractor requirements, our structural engineers got to work crunching the numbers to prove that the clamp had adequate strength and determined the installation torque such that the clamping force would have sufficient slip resistance but not locally damage the conductor.
The A SQUARED team used their experience in subsea operations to work with the tooling supplier and installation contractor to develop a design that met with the constraints specific to this repair clamp installation. Once the clamp design had been developed to meet client and installation contractor requirements, our structural engineers got to work crunching the numbers to prove that the clamp had adequate strength and determined the installation torque such that the clamping force would have sufficient slip resistance but not locally damage the conductor.
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Benefit for the Customer It was important to our client that the responsible engineers understood the challenges of installing a clamp at the -15m LAT guide location and were comfortable performing calculations for preloaded bolted connections and determining the slip resistance generated by a clamp. Our team went above and beyond to meet our clients cost and schedule expectations on a tight project delivery timeline. |
