Fugro offers a new pile inclination monitoring service based on Fugro’s offshore survey product range, which supports smart, safe offshore pile installations.
A key requirement of pile installation is pile verticality. Traditionally the verticality or inclination was measured by means of pausing the piling and measure the inclination using handheld inclinometers. This traditional method has HSE disadvantages, can cause delay in the piling operations and the crane and hammer operators have no real-time on-line information on pile verticality during piling.
Furthermore, due to irregularity of the outside pile surface, the local manual inclination measurements do not always result in an accurate representation of the inclination of the complete pile. Fugro’s inclination monitoring service provides a new solution enabling real-time continuous verticality monitoring. The principle is based on intelligent visual object recognition of pile outlines combined with vessel motion compensation.
Two boxes containing high-resolution cameras aimed at the pile, are placed at about 90° angles from each other. Each camera is connected to an inertial motion unit (IMU) to account for vessel dynamics. The camera images and IMU data are accurately time stamped and synchronized using Fugro’s StarPort device. Fugro’s comprehensive Starfix navigation suite receives all information and visualizes the results on-line though a simple and intuitive user interface. The system is compact and can be deployed easily.
Fugro is exhibiting at the Offshore Energy 2012, at booth number 303, with a video demonstration of its new service.
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Press release, October 23, 2012; Image: fugrorenewables