Mooring chains secure floating structures in off-shore production of oil and gas. They can cause oil leaks if they fail and rupture the flexible pipes that bring the product to the surface which is a relatively common problem. Chain failures result in 47% of offshore accidents worldwide, generating clean-up costs averaging £670 million a year.
Regular inspection helps to reduce the levels of failure, allowing problems like corrosion, fatigue cracking and weld faults to be addressed before failure occurs.
Manual inspection is costly and dangerous. It’s expensive to remove a chain weighing many tons and bring it to shore to inspect it and the heavy chains generate large dynamic forces creating highly hazardous conditions for divers. Furthermore, current technologies can’t reliably inspect mooring chains in all environments (underwater, splash zone and in air.)
The RIMCAW project at London South Bank Innovation Centre aims to develop a compact, mobile Non Destructive Testing (NDT) robot, with advanced ultrasound sensors, that can climb on mooring chains both underwater and in air to scan chain links.
The robotic NDT system will provide a tool to assess the condition of mooring chains, enabling asset managers to make decisions about repairs and to more accurately predict chain lifetime. It will also reduce inspection costs by speeding up coverage of a mooring chain and remove the need for diver inspection.
RIMCAW addresses the InnovateUK call for Robotics and Autonomous Systems (RAS):
RIMCAW will provide a tool to: