Association Technique Maritime et Aéronautique

Numéro : 2716 - Year : 2017

Reliability for structural bonding: an advance solution for corrosion repairs on offshore units

Luc MOUTON, Bureau Veritas ( Nantes - France)

Xabier ERROTABEHERE, Firas SAYED AHMAD, COLDPAD (Paris - France)

 

An increasing number of Floating Production Storage and Offloading offshore units reaches maturity (>10 years). This induces costly maintenance operations; a large part is related to the hull structure corrosion damage. While crop and renew operations are generally performed in dry docks for supertankers, the FPSO are maintained afloat on the production site, offshore on the oil field. The maintenance in those conditions leads to cost and security issues. Actually, for security reasons hot work such as welding and gauging are prohibited without a heavy set of recommendations on emptying and inerting the cargo tanks. The operational cost of such repairs is very high. For decades, FPSO’s operators have sought “cold” solutions with better assets on security and economic necessity.

This paper describes how COLDPAD, through the development of ColdshieldTM, established a high standard in marinized structural bonded reinforcements during its installation and proposed a special product in terms of durability. Indeed, water being a known degradation factor for bonding, the use of bonded reinforcement offshore is limited by the inbound sensitivity to the environment, particularly the marine environment. Finally, the strength of bonded reinforcement is known as difficult to predict, the design phase becoming more a research and development process than an engineering phase compatible with industrial application. The paper details how through an innovative design and an intensive tests campaign a robust strength prediction was reach for the typical offshore application cases.

ColdshieldTM technology was granted with the BUREAU VERITAS concept approval following 3 years of close collaboration during the qualification phase of Coldshield™.

The first reinforcements have been installed offshore. ColdshieldTM constitutes the first and only solely-bonded reinforcement participating to the hull girder strength approved for offshore unit repairs as permanent repair, which constitutes a major innovation for the offshore industry.

 

 

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