Welaptega Marine, world leader in solving complex underwater problems, is launching an intelligent imaging solution to detect and measure deterioration of wire rope moorings of FPSOs.
The wire rope inspection service (WRIS) provides targeted quantitative visual inspection of regions of unsheathed wire rope where deterioration is known to occur.
Welaptega is offering the new service in response to concerns raised by FPSO operators during the recent floating production mooring integrity working group at the FPSO forum in Wageningen, Netherlands.
"At the forum it became quickly evident that the industry has a growing problem with unexpected and premature failure and deterioration of wire rope mooring lines. FPSO operators and other industry players talked about wire rope line failures, strand breakage and localised deteriorative mechanisms of wire rope" said Tony Hall, CEO and founder of Welaptega.
"We have the tools to provide reliable data on wire rope condition, specifically to identify and quantify the types of deterioration that is leading to an increase in mooring line failures"
"If you want to prevent a failure one needs to be proactive and look for evidence of deterioration. That’s what we do" said Hall.
At the FPSO forum FPSO operators discussed an unexpectedly high incidence of wire rope deterioration at the seabed ‘touch-down’ zone. The issues of greatest concern were ‘bird-caging’ (unraveling) in the region adjacent to wire termination (socket), and localised surface notching/grooving of component wire strands due to inter-strand abrasion.
This type of abrasion increases the risk of line failure, and is often present where there is a decrease in the outside diameter of wire rope, typically in the region 5m to 15m from the wire rope termination.
The Welaptega service identifies and quantifies these types of deterioration using a selection of proprietary mooring inspection technologies, all of which are accredited by DNV and Lloyds Register:
- Rope measurement system (RMS)
- High-definition 3D-video (HD3DV)
- 3D photogrammetric modeling (3DM)