Longitude Engineering has won a major contract with A2SEA to deliver the transportation engineering package for the 67 Siemens 6MW turbines at Dudgeon offshore wind farm off the coast of Cromer in North Norfolk, UK.
A2SEA will install the turbines using its purpose-built second generation installation vessel SEA INSTALLER and has commissioned Longitude Engineering to assist with the design of component sea fastenings including the tower and nacelle grillages and blade racks, along with a motions and blade tip immersion analysis for the vessel whilst it is transporting and installing the turbines.
Andrew Butler, Managing Director at Longitude Engineering said:
“SEA INSTALLER will transport four towers at a time and with the towers 81 metres high, weighing 385 tonnes and with a centre of gravity some 35 metres above deck on a narrow 6m radius base footprint, the very high cyclical reactions loads imposed on the sea fastenings and deck structures present specific structural challenges. Although each turbine blade is only 26 tonnes, these relatively lightweight composite structures at a total length of 75m significantly overhang the sides of the 39m wide vessel. Our motions analysis allows for determination of the sea state limit for the transportation”.
The Dudgeon Offshore Wind Farm is owned by Statoil (35%), Masdar (35%) and Statkraft (30%) and is expected to begin operating in 2017.