Smart anchor weighs in
  from: Offshore Engineer
  by: Darius Snieckus
  Friday, May 16, 2008

Dutch specialist Vryhof is putting the final touches to development of its Stevtrack anchor data acquisition system, a technology designed to ‘monitor and visualise’ the behaviour of anchors during installation and transmit orientation and load data topside in real-time from embedment through to final penetration.

Though monitoring has been on the company’s anchor development agenda since the 1970s, the new Stevtrack system is a spin-off from the testing and development work on its latest anchor, the Stevpris Mk6.

‘We needed to verify the final geometrics and monitor the anchor’s behaviour during embedment offshore but there was no appropriate system available on the market,’ explains Vryhof technical director Roderick Ruinen. ‘So we decided to develop our own system. With the Stevpris Mk6, when the anchor was recovered we could read out the data from this instrument.

‘Although our focus then was to develop a new generation anchor, we immediately recognised the significance of that instrument if we could make the data available in real-time.’ Stevtrack evolved out of this recognition.

Vryhof sees particular application for the Stevtrack system in deepwater, where, as Ruinen puts it, ‘you might have a $500 million asset where everything in the project can be measured and monitored, but for the mooring system that has to keep it in place there is no real-time, onsite data from the anchor point available’.

Stevtrack builds on experience gained with the Mk6, which could only download data acquired once the anchor was recovered. ‘The most challenging part of our new system is the real-time aspect,’ underlines Ruinen. ‘Data transmission gets more challenging in increasing water depths, and even more difficult when the transmitter is deeply embedded in the seabed.’

Transmission from seabed-to-surface and surface-to-vessel was ‘less of a challenge and a matter of choosing the right components available on the market today’, he adds.

Vryhof has developed proprietary Windows-compatible software that provides a graphical user interface, allowing for visualisation of the penetration of the anchor and displaying real-time data such as roll, pitch and load, as well as measuring, displaying, printing, storing, or retrieving data.

‘Stevtrack is one of the key products of our innovation strategy,’ states Vryhof ’s recently-appointed managing director Øyvind Wathne. ‘It is a priority R&D;project to maintain our customer focus and to assist customers with their future installations. It is a major step forward in mooring technology.’ OE

MOORING SPREAD: InterMoor unveiled its expanded Port Fourchon, Louisiana, facility in late March. Now occupying 25 acres, the facility includes over 1200ft of bulkhead waterfront dock space, a warehouse, office and training center. It also has three cranes to support the yard: 300t and 225t crawler cranes and the 880t ringer crane, the Cajun Lifter, which serves as the centerpiece of the expanded facility.

‘The Cajun Lifter provides our customers with not only expanded lifting capacity, but also extended reach,’ says InterMoor president Tom Fulton. ‘The crane allows loads to be moved further out, providing increased storage capacity.’

Since the expanded facility’s grand opening, InterMoor, an Acteon company, has signed an agreement to lease space there to Halo, a wire rope and industrial supplies provider. Halo’s facility will include an 11,000ft2 warehouse and fabrication shop; a hydraulic swaging machine capable of pressing up to 3 1/2in sleeves; and seven spooling units with the largest capable of handling 300,000lbs. It will also feature a 3 million lbs, 220ft load test bed with 11ft stroke capable of testing mooring lines and heavy-lift slings. OE

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