COMPANY PROFILE
SOIL MACHINE DYNAMICS (SMD)
INNOVATIVE EQUIPMENT FOR THE WIND INDUSTRY
SMD is the world’s leading subsea equipment manufacturer committed to high quality and performance backed up by thorough engineering and solid support.
EXPERIENCE Founded in 1971 as Soil Machine Dynamics Ltd, SMD is headquartered in the United Kingdom with offices in Singapore and Houston. SMD provides
most powerful trenching ROV, Trenching Tractor and fall pipe ROV. SMD cable and pipeline ploughs have successfully trenched multiple cables and pipelines across the globe.
NEW OPPORTUNITY
The decline in the telecoms industry around 2004, followed by the growth of offshore wind and marine renewables markets created a new opportunity. In order to address these emerging markets they have adapted their existing range of subsea ploughs and trenching vehicles to focus particularly on the subsea power and control cable infrastructure for the marine renewables industry.
NEW CHALLENGES Offshore wind farm installations presented a new range of challenges which called for a series of product innovations. Vehicles are required to operate in harder seabed conditions to bury cables up to five
INNOVATIVE INDUSTRY SPECIFIC EQUIPMENT
SMD has used its expertise, developed from working with telecoms cabling in the marine environment, and adapted existing products to develop a suite of proven trenching systems tailored to Offshore Wind and Offshore Power Cable installation, providing effective solutions to this growing industry.
For example, reduced visibility and strong currents directly impact on the ease of vehicle recovery; therefore an umbilical guided recovery system has been developed to allow quick and easy recovery in low visibility, high sea-state conditions.
The QT1000 and QT1400 vehicles were specifically developed for offshore wind installation. Both vehicles are designed to operate in shallow water, high current conditions, with low visibility, and to work with larger less flexible product which is typical of Offshore Wind Farms. The QT1400 offers multiple tooling providing operators with the ability to tackle any seabed conditions with one machine, therefore reducing cost.
INCREASED PRODUCTIVITY Vehicles use tooling engineered to increase trenching speeds, increasing productivity and in turn reducing customer costs. They are the only company which can offer customers a suite of deck equipment to launch and control their trenching vehicles, providing a level of assurance and risk mitigation, which once again helps to drive down costs and risks associated with installation.
SUMMARY
SMD’s continual evolution and innovation in seafloor cable protection equipment has enabled the Offshore Wind industry to improve infrastructure at a rate which enables it to meet 2020 targets. Their customers are now able to deliver reliable and cost effective cable protection methodologies to wind farm constructors.
to the energy (oil & gas and renewable), telecoms, mining, military and scientific industries with an increasing number of vehicles more recently being manufactured for the Offshore Wind market.
They have delivered in excess of 100 subsea trenchers and ploughs with a long experience in providing a reliable solutions for safely protecting cable and umbilical in hard ground. This includes the world’s
times larger in diameter (and therefore considerably less flexible) in trenches up to three times deeper than previously required by the telecoms industry. This was a real step-change in the capability required.
In addition to the changes in cable handling, the vehicles themselves needed to be more manoeuvrable, operate in tidal conditions with poor visibility and be capable of protecting a cable which had already been installed on the sea bed.
As a result of this SMD has seen its turnover relating to Offshore Wind grow from around 10% in 2010 to 30% in 2012.
SMD
www.smd.co.uk
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www.windenergynetwork.co.uk
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