Transportkunde Pandora

Transportkunde Pandora

On the 12th of Januari was the first lunch lecture of the year. Wouter Rijkee, Technical Project Manager at Huisman, gave a presentation about the Huisdrill Floating Factory. What is it exactly? Well, it is a drill on a floating factory, who would have thought!

The Huisdrill Floating Factory is designed to drill for oil and gas at deep depths in seas and oceans. Huisman commissions the complete drill, from design to maintenance, with the exception of the construction of the ship. Some of their drills are placed on existing ships, while other ships are built around it! What makes the drill so special that ships are built around it? The biggest pipes have a diameter of at most a few 100 mm diameter, this may not sound really small, but imagine a pipe that is more than 1 km long and has to drill into the ocean bed. The ratio between length and diameter is huge and causes all kinds of stresses in the pipe. Another difficulty in drilling in the ocean bed is the constant movement of the water and the ship. The Huisdrill is designed to function under, normally considered difficult weather circumstances. Enough of the underwater world, lets get some fresh air. What makes this drill different from that of other companies? Huisman took the conventional (onshore) design and stripped it down to only the functional components. One of the problems of the conventional design is the amount of space a drill tower uses. The amount of space on a ship is limited and was a key factor in the design. Huisman decided to construct a drill tower which only consisted of one big tower with all the functional components inside it. This design drastically increased the available space. The tower has three functions: drilling, storing pipes and connecting pipes. The drill of the tower faces the bridge, the other side of the tower is used to weld the smaller pipes together, which increases the drilling speed. The sides of the tower are used to store the welded pipes. The pipes can be welded together when the ship is sailing to its destination, all of this together makes the Huisdrill a very efficient drilling tower.

The presentation went into much more detail, but it is almost impossible to explain the mechanics of the drill without any animations. The best thing to do is go to their site and have a look around. If you would like to do your graduation project at Huisman, but do not know how to contact them please reach out to us. We will help you out!

Dispuut Transportkunde Pandora hopes to see you all next time at all the upcoming events!