As part of the Offshore Wind Accelerator (OWA) program, Carbon Trust has issued a tender seeking companies interested in undertaking a study to provide a reference document for active fender systems.
The objective of the Active Fender Systems project is to provide the reference document for active fender systems describing the range of systems available, their characteristics, and identifying promising future concepts that could improve the performance of offshore wind vessels.
An assessment of different fender arrangements and systems will allow operators to improve safety, increase productivity and reduce cost.
The fender design is crucial for conventional crew transfer vessels to access offshore wind turbines, affecting both the transfer capability and the impact between the vessel and the turbines. Improved or optimised design could therefore lead to reduced impacts and increased vessel performance, the Carbon Trust pointed out.
The OWA Access addresses the fact that there are numerous fenders and fender systems available on the market and new and innovative systems are being introduced with no current way of comparison or benchmarking. Hence, the understanding of the performance of fender systems is important in ensuring access to turbines, especially in harsher sea conditions further offshore.
The deadline for tender submissions is at 23:59 (BST) on 20 October 2017.