Product category:
Bearings
News Release from: SKF UK
Edited by the Engineeringtalk Editorial
Team on 05 June 2001
Huge bearings for deep water pipeline
laying ship
SKF has gained a significant contract from Coflexip Stena Offshore to supply four huge spherical roller bearings and cast steel housings for the world's largest deep water pipeline laying ship
SKF (U.K.) Limited has gained a significant contract, worth nearly ?1.2M, from Coflexip Stena Offshore to supply four huge spherical roller bearings and cast steel housings for the world's largest deep water pipeline laying ship, 'CSO Deep Blue' The ship was launched recently at Hyundai's Mipo yard in Ulsan, Korea, and SKF is currently supervising the mounting of the bearing units on the vessel
This article was originally published on Engineeringtalk on 1 Aug 2008 at 8.00am (UK)
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The pipe laying equipment will be installed in the Netherlands in early 2001.
The bearings support two 770 tonne reels, each carrying 2500 tonnes of rigid steel pipe of up to 400mm diameter, wound around a hub that is 20m in diameter.
The design of the reels enables pipe to be welded onshore and then continuously laid at sea in lengths from 12.5km of 400mm diameter pipe up to 333km of 60mm pipe.
The bearings and their housings have been designed to allow the rotation of the reels in seas with up to 4m significant wave height.
The bearing housings consist of one pair weighing 34 tonnes each and another pair each weighing 26 tonnes.
These were designed by SKF in the UK and were manufactured by Forgemasters in the UK.
The bearings, which have outside diameters of 2.06m and 1.85m respectively, were designed by SKF's Large Scale Bearings (LSB) design team in Gothenburg, Sweden, and manufactured at LSB facilities in both Gothenberg and Schweinfurt, Germany.
The lubrication for the bearings requires a staggering 2160kg of SKF grease LGEM2! The ship has been designed to operate in the deep waters of Brazil, the Gulf of Mexico and West Africa, or in the harsh conditions of the North Sea, and has already been proposed for Elf's Canyon Express pipeline project, due to start in the Gulf of Mexico in 2001.
The order was won against stiff competition and SKF's strength in both engineering and service satisfied Coflexip Stena's stringent demands. Request free introductory details about products from SKF UK ...
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