ARE YOU SEEKING SURETY IN ROV / AUV BUOYANCY DESIGN, MANUFACTURE AND DELIVERY?

Established in 1980, Balmoral has an enviable reputation across the world for product design, development and delivery.

With 500+ people based at our purpose-built 250,000ft² facility in Aberdeen, we build successful relationships with clients working with them from concept development and advice through to product design, manufacture, testing, delivery and support.

All managed in-house to give total safety, quality and scheduling control.

ROV / AUV BUOYANCY SOLUTIONS

Overview

With advances in deepwater technology the need for remote intervention as part of field installation has seen a major increase in the number of deepwater remotely operated and autonomous underwater vehicles.

As the complexity of these vehicles evolves the demand for lower density, high performance composites buoyancy systems has increased. This is an area where Balmoral has made significant technological advances.

The use of conventional cast composite buoyancy packs still has many commercial benefits for large vehicles used for trenching of pipelines or submarine cables. However, for deep dive work class ROVs, operating beyond 2000msw, the performance benefits of Balmoral’s LDF series becomes significant.

This low density, pure foam composite provides the operator an opportunity to increase the uplift (buoyancy) of the vehicle thereby resulting in increased payload capacity. It also provides an opportunity to reduce the size of the buoyancy modules thereby reducing the overall weight and dimensions of the vehicle.

Balmoral LDF buoyancy is available from stock for operations at depths to 7000msw.

Balmoral also supplies ROV support equipment for use on the umbilical systems including floats and FlexLink®, a buoyant umbilical bend control system.

Buoyancy systems

Composite foam systems

A “composite” buoyancy foam system refers to a syntactic foam comprising glass microspheres and macrospheres held together within a polymer matrix.

Composite foam buoyancy systems are cast using dedicated mould tooling providing repeatable consistent production and are therefore ideally suited in applications such as work class ROVs – particularly on a multi-build requirement.

Each component within any given Balmoral syntactic foam is individually rated for specific operating depths resulting in a strong, lightweight composite formulation.

There is an overlap in the operating depth ranges which is caused by macro efficiency changes in design operating depths. This means that more efficient, lower density composites may generate improved uplift for a given volume as the operating depth increases.

Composite buoyancy systems comprise an integrated skin to ensure maximum protection of the core material in the event of accidental impact and abrasion.

Pure foam systems

Pure syntactic foams provide many advantages over macrosphere composite foam systems including robustness, ease of repair and modification in the event of damage or design changes while offering extremely low water ingress rates.

It should be noted, however, that this is a premium product and is therefore typically selected for more demanding service conditions such as extreme operating depths and/or service criticality such as manned service.

The ultra-low density range of pure syntactic foam is normally produced in pre-cast blocks. These blocks may be supplied for client assembly or can be factory assembled into finished buoyancy modules in Balmoral’s on-site machine shop and tested in the company’s state-of-the-art hydrostatic test centre giving Balmoral complete control over the entire manufacture, finishing and testing process.

The buoyancy performance of Balmoral’s ultra-low-density material is understood to be unique amongst ROV buoyancy foams in that the buoyancy does not progressively reduce due to hydrostatic compression as the ROV moves into deeper water. This is because the bulk modulus, ie, the compressibility under hydrostatic pressure of the foams, is marginally less than sea water.

Pure foam ultra-low density range (LDF)