Page 50: of Maritime Reporter Magazine (May 2021)

In the Shipyard

Ship of the Month

Alfa Lift Main Particulars

Shipyard China Merchants Heavy Industry (CMHI) Shipyard

Length, o.a. 216.3 m

Ulstein Design & Solutions

Length, bpp 204.3 m

Beam (molded) 56 m

Depth (main deck) 12.6 m quirements, rules and ing to do it safely, ef? ciently, correctly, time and again. The

Draft (design) 8 m regulations as well as traditional means to install the foundations entailed anchoring

Draft (submerged max.) 27.6 m physical aspects that the ship on the seabed to stabilize the ship and maintain posi-

Service speed 13 knots you have to analyze tion. But with the pace of installation targeted to one day per

Installed power 4 x 6,875 kW and design for,” said monopile, this approach would have been too time consum-

Propulsion thrusters 3 x 5,500 kW van Leeuwen. “In ing. The solution: installing monopiles in DP mode.”

Retractable thruster 1 x 3,000 kW this particular vessel, “The whole development of this concept started off with

Tunnel thrusters (fwd) 3 x 3,000 kW there is a multitude of the controls and automation,” said Ramstad. “As I like to say,

Positioning system DP 2 operations that have we took the Tesla approach. We didn’t start with the car. We

Class DNV to be served with the started with the software.”

Deck strength 30 t/m2 same vessel. Different “The challenge is to keep the vessel stable enough to achieve

Complement 100 persons functions, all leading very tight tolerances, in terms of verticality for the mono- to different loading piles,” said Ramstad. “You have to stabilize the monopile, conditions. What we which can be a hundred meters high and weigh maybe two designed for was monopile installation and transportation, and a half thousand tons. You’re holding it around the cen- jacket transportation and installation, submerged lifts, heavy- ter of gravity or even below it … it’s unstable. So we deploy lift transport with a submerged vessel.” SpaceX algorithms to control it,” the same way SpaceX are

Both Ramstad and van Leeuwen stressed the collaborative able to control the rocket’s landing on a barge in the middle of nature throughout the design process as central to its ultimate the Atlantic Ocean.” success. The result was a creative process to design a ship that Next up was designing a cargo handling system to ef? cient- was not only big and strong, but ‘smart’, too, in its innovative ly move and handle the massive piece of unique and valuable deck handling system and machinery to streamline the han- cargo … while buffeted by the notoriously rough North Sea.

dling of foundations on deck. “We said: ‘In order to mechanize and automate the process “This whole story was about thinking in terms of high vol- of installation, which is actually a serial production or repeti- umes and repetitive tasks,” said Ramstad, with the ‘trick’ be- tive process, you need to handle things in parallel. You need to 50 Maritime Reporter & Engineering News • May 2021

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