Patent Detects Mooring Link Wear
Posted: 18 May 2005
The U.S. Patent Office in April awarded Patent No. 6874246 to Saudi Aramco for an invention by Ray A. Cookson of Consulting Services for measuring wear on the mooring systems that hold tankers while they are being loaded.
Crude carriers must be held in place while they are being loaded with hydrocarbon products for delivery around the world.
To anchor them in place, Saudi Aramco uses shackles, padeyes and large chains, mostly under water.
Any failure of the moorings could result in serious damage to the berth or the tanker and could even cause significant environmental pollution. Wear on the chains and attachments is very difficult to identify and even more difficult to measure.
Cookson's invention consists of a tube with closed ends, upon which are mounted two sliding arms that can be locked in place on the tube. The closed ends enable the device to be weightless when submerged. The two sliding arms enable wear measurements to be made relatively easily and accurately on points that do not line up.
Measurements of the equipment made while in service can be compared with the original measurements to detect the amount of wear and accurately predict the life of the anchors and development of a timely maintenance schedule.
Posted by Editor Offshore Arabia Magazine
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