Transport and install water supply piping with marine air bags
admin:admin time:2013-07-19
Marine airbags can be used as pneumatic rollers to move heavy that application has been widely applied in construction field. Recently one ingenious airbag application in piping transport and installation field had been successfully completed.
That 1297 meters long water supply pipe with 1.8 m diameter weighs 1300 tons. It needs to be buried into seabed for 4 meters depth to supply water to Nansan Island from Zhanjiang pump station. To install the pipe, engineers designed three plans all of them have the problems of high cost and long time. Inspired by caisson transportation with marine airbags, the technical team decided to use balloons to move pipes from shore and float them in the sea. Taking this method the project could be effected tinily by weather condition and also save much time and lands.
Pre constructed pipe segments were welded together to be about 200 meters long then lifted up by air bags. Winches from opposite bank plus one tug pulled the pipe to get into sea from shore. At the same time every 8 pieces marine airbags were fixed to one pipe segment as buoyancy bags. When all linear pipe segments floated in the sea, people sunk them by removing seal flange. Then all linear pipe segment were connected together. By adjusting airbags’ pressure, it is very convenient to make the pipe to be linear.
Anchors were employed to fix pipe above the dredged ditch. Then airbags were deflated to make pipe sunk into the ditch.
Marine airbags are found to be powerful tool to move and assist pipe installation. By this technology pipe segments can be assembled together on the land as long as possible that helps time saving and also pipe assembly quality. No land occupation need, no environment change are also remarkable benefits of airbag transportation.
