Project Deliverable D50 Report on Best Practices ... - ESONET NoE

Panel 3-3 : Underwater intervention and 20years plus material
choice
Chairs : Jean-François Drogou (Ifremer), Volker Ratmeyer (Marum)
Dominique Choqueuse (Ifremer) and Marck Smit (NIOZ)
Thursday 8th - Underwater intervention
They are no standards or recommended practises covering globally the subject of ROV intervention,
apart form the NORSOK "U-102 Remotely Operated Vehicles (ROV) services".
Most of the know how is retained by each individual operator, and is hardly exchanged within the
industry, for obvious reasons of commercial competition.
However, it would be advisable for the scientific community for which commercial competition is a
far less present parameter, to build up a database related to ROV intervention, collecting data on
vehicles performances, tooling and sensors usage feed-back, break down statistics, operational
hazards, crew manning, maintenance tricks, etc. , which could lately be the base for a general
recommended practise on underwater diverless intervention. The work should also cover ultimately
the AUV operations, for which the underwater community in general, still misses a real feed-back.
The existing intervention equipment (Submarines, ROV and AUV, hybrid vehicles ) available within
the scientific community will govern the early days of intervention procedures on underwater
observatories (methodology and operational procedures are largely dependant on the intervention
equipment specifications), it will be beneficial in the long term to work out the specifications of
standard vehicles, which will offer both performances and versatility, and would allow the various
laboratories to exchange hardware, operators and know how.
Objectives:
The objective of the working group would be to provide the scientific users with proper guidelines on
what equipment to use for each type of missions, and recommended practices to operate it in a safe
and productive way. As a case study, it would be interesting to compare how an observatory deployed
during a demonstration mission (LOOME, MomarD, Lido, MODOO...?) would be deployed using
existing ROVs. At least two cases are to consider.
Friday 9th - 20 years + lifetime material choice
In the definition of subsea observatories, from the scientific vision to the cost estimates, the long term
durable operation is a key issue and probably a limitation. Any improvement in the limitation of
ageing of materials and components is worth being analysed.
The choice of material and its protection towards corrosion has not yet been addressed directly inside
Esonet. The panel will start from a white paper issued before the Workshop (from Esonet CA Final
report). It will work with the practices of the oceanography partners but also from offshore oil and gas
industry and Navy experience.
Topics intended:
1. corrosion protection of steel - cathodic protection,
2. choices of materials and strength after ageing corrosion due to neighbouring materials
(components such as connectors, actuators, cables),
3. thermoplastics and composites - ageing issues.
ESONET partners already designed equipment for the Demonstration Missions. One or two of these
equipments could be used as a case study for analysis of the material choice, other possible choices
and other practices.
<strong>Deliverable</strong> #50 - update October 2010 52