Brochure - GICON® - SOF

THE GICON® SOF
NEW MATERIALS - LESS COSTS
99% of current offshore structures are conventionally build by welding elements of shipbuilding
steel. However, welding operations are very time consuming and expensive. For
one single steel floating substructure for a 6 MW turbine at least four months of working
would be necessary. When considering man hours, rent for the dock and raw materials, this
floating substructure would cost 2500-3000 € per metric ton. For the GICON®-SOF instead,
prestressed ultra-high performance concrete (UHPC) elements will be used, which leads to
a significant reduction in production cost.
For the GICON®-SOF instead, prestressed Ultra-High-Performance-Concrete
(UHPC) pipes will be used. UHPC has a very high density and therefore
high bearing capacities. This means the GICON®-SOF can be build
more efficiently which leads to lighter designs. Prestressing is a proven
method in bridge engineering. By this approach a prestressing force is
applied to the concrete element, causing a high compression within
the concrete matrix. This ensures, that during the entire lifetime of the
structure, no tensile stresses occur within the concrete material. As concrete
can bear very high compression but only very low tensile stresses
prestressing is a great method to improve the bearing capacity and life
time of members made from this material. The prefabricated concrete
elements have a cost of 450-500€ per metric ton which is much more
cost efficient than welded steel structures.
The buoyancy bodies, which are placed at the 4 corners of the GI-
CON®-SOF, are made out of concrete shell elements. These elements
are well known and have been proven in tunnel engineering over decades
where they are designed to last at least 100 years. This includes
also the sealing which can bear mountain water pressures of more than
1*10⁶Pa.