ABB introduces smart motion compensation
The system aims to plug a gap in the market for a versatile, portable and low cost solution that can be installed on new or existing marine and offshore applications.
“The X‐Wave Motion Compensation System can be applied to all types of offshore motion compensation applications, whether building new equipment or retrofitting to existing equipment,” said Paul Cairns, managing director of MJR Power and Automation.
He added: “X‐Wave provides a number of novel features to provide a single ‘out of the box’ OEM solution to all marine and offshore motion compensation applications.”
The advanced motion compensation system features a range of automation, electrical and control equipment from ABB.
Further development work is currently underway to more closely integrate the unique benefits of the system within the ABB ACS880 advanced drive platform to provide a cost effective tightly integrated electric drive AHC solution.
X-Wave is said to automatically modify and optimise control system behaviour in response to changing vessel dynamics. This means no vessel specific setup is required and equipment can be transferred between vessels.
The system can control up to six degrees of freedom covering single axis ‘heave’ compensation of lifting devices such as cranes, winches and linear compensators through to multi-axis platform stabilisation.
It can be deployed with high availability, redundant architecture and can be configured to control more than one machine.
Mr Cairns concluded: “Whilst active heave compensation and platform stabilisation systems are existing and well known, they are proprietary and single application, equipment and/or vessel specific.”
“They are generally bespoke, designed specifically for a particular application or machine and therefore require a significant amount of re‐engineering or adaptation for a different application. They also require a lengthy, complex and therefore very costly commissioning period.”
