One of the world’s largest tensile testing machines features among enhanced capabilities at new DNV laboratories located at purpose-built facilities in Bergen, Norway.
Published: 17 October 2016
The machine’s 2,900 ton (28,500 kilonewton) load capacity - equivalent to the weight of 600 elephants - has been raised from 2,500 tons. Its test bed has also been extended by five metres to enable samples up to 20 meters length.
The enhanced equipment has boosted the capacity of DNV’s Technology Centre for Offshore Mooring and Lifting, which is located at new premises in Bergen’s Marineholmen Science Park. The Centre conducts qualification and verification testing of fibre ropes, mooring chains, steel wires, and other components such as lifting accessories and oilfield risers.
“The equipment upgrade, which includes an advanced control system, will enable testing of big fibre ropes that are being used in deepwater fields today and in the future,” explained Mads Arild Eidem, DNV’s head of section for materials, Bergen.
Equipment aside, the facilities stand out in this area of testing because the Technology Centre’s team of experts has more than 30 years of experience in helping customers optimize mooring and lifting systems for high-profile projects globally. This includes a recent technical pre-qualification of polyester mooring ropes for a Shell deepwater project.
The Technology Centre for Offshore Mooring and Lifting comprises 3,000 square metre facilities close to DNV’s new Materials and Corrosion Technology Centre in Bergen.
“Having more space and superior infrastructure means our customers can have standard or tailored tests to suit their needs and get test results faster,” Eidem said.
He expects the Marineholmen development to catalyse even closer cooperation and more rapid support to the oil and gas industry on the Norwegian Continental Shelf (NCS). However, the expertise and facilities will continue a long record of serving manufacturers, contractors and operators from many countries.
Failure investigations and identifying root causes
The new Materials and Corrosion Technology Centre is dedicated to investigating failures and testing materials characteristics and performance with respect to corrosion resistance.
The company’s long history of corrosion and coating testing begins a fresh chapter at Bergen as natural seawater flows directly into the new laboratory. This provides a representative environment for marine corrosion testing for the NCS.
The laboratory also has greater capacity to expose samples safely to H2S for qualifying materials for service in sour environments, an issue in many challenging oil and gas fields. This underlines how DNV’s global network of 18 laboratories complement and collaborate with each other to service a global industry.
The Materials and Corrosion Technology Centre’s capabilities in failure investigation and root cause analysis are being applied to ensure that results and lessons learned are communicated more rapidly and shared more easily with the industry.
DNV has a track record of demonstrating how incident investigation knowledge can be turned into industry guidance and benefits. In one example, the company’s experts conducted a number of failure analyses caused by hydrogen induced stress cracking (HISC) in duplex materials installed subsea.
Based on in-depth materials investigations and root cause analysis of these failures, DNV established a joint industry project to solve the problem, and quickly established a guideline for safe use of duplex materials. As a result, confidence in using duplex materials subsea has been re-established, and Recommended Practice DNV-RP-F112 Design of duplex stainless steel subsea equipment exposed to cathodic protection has become the global industry standard for preventing HISC. Similar outcomes have resulted from failure analysis on fasteners, thruster gears, hydraulic piston rods and anchor damage to pipelines.
Discover the full capabilities of the new Bergen laboratories at dnvgl.com/bergenlab.
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