Jack-up on jack-up – new vessel design revealed

The ’jack-up on jack-up’ is a 15m wide platform that can be elevated up to the height of the turbine nacelle, up to 175 metres.

It eliminates the need for dangerous rope access to the nacelle or blades, instead providing a safe platform that has a telescopic weather cover fitted to it that can also accommodate turbine blades of 130m in length.

At the aft end of the platform itself is an air-conditioned workshop, which means that when the weather cover is fully deployed, the platform essentially turns into a factory, allowing work to be done on the blades without having to take them back ashore.

Access to the nacelle is given by a cherry picker mounted on a hammer head at the fore end of the platform, and with the architects adding the option to insert an X-Y motion-compensating system between the work platform and the platform carriers, the platform can remain stationary.

Knud E. Hansen has been designing ships and providing engineering services since 1937. It says more than 800 vessels have been built to its designs, with thousands of studies carried out.

This concept, it says, is patent pending.