Motion-compensated gangway optimised for wind market

A naval architect with experience as an engineer and project manager for several major shipping companies, Van Nes understands the shipping world like few others.

“I have a team of engineers,” he says, “and I have a very good lead engineer, who is responsible for aligning the disciplines – from structural, to steel work, design, and motion control. Our team ensures that the correct actuation is there and that it is strong enough and has sufficient power to compensate the motions.

“Unlike most other Ampelmann systems, the W-type is a sold system so it’s crucial to involve the client in all steps of the process. My role as project manager is to liaise between both clients and our own team of engineers to get the best results.”

As a fully integrated tower system with a wide horizontal gangway, this offshore access solution is ideally suited to facilitate the increasing need to build, commission and maintain a growing number of wind turbines. With three W-type systems already sold, the company will need to make good on its performance predictions for the W-type.

Though the W-type is not the first system within Ampelmann’s fleet without the company’s signature hexapod, it is, in some sense, a departure from the company’s well-known gangways.

“Ampelmann is founded on Wind, but grown by oil and gas,” Van Nes says, “but now we are moving back to where we started. When setting up wind farms you usually need to bring a lot of equipment and tools, and what our clients want is to bring a pallet with tools and spare parts, which is easier to do with a horizontal gangway. In other words, we needed a system that can always land horizontally and is wide enough to allow safe access for trolleys.

“The typical Ampelmann systems compensate for 6DOF, which stands for six degrees of freedom, so you can compensate for xyz and the three rotations. But now we have 3DOF, luffing, slewing and telescoping. In many ways, these components are an extension of things we have done in the past. We have slewing already, and luffing we’ve done for years, but now we hinge around the tower so we can also compensate the motions there.”

Energy focus

Following the company’s commitment to electrify the entire Ampelmann fleet, the W-type is the first electric system, within its class, in the world.

There are many advantages to electrically controlled systems. Like the company’s electric A-, L- and S-types, the system consumes significantly less energy and has a low carbon footprint.

“This is an important innovation,” Van Nes says. “The W-type is fully electric, or rather it’s fully electrically controlled, and that word is important, because the power is in some cases still hydraulic. This means that, as in the electric A-type, the hydraulics are in a closed system, and we can supply power on demand and use batteries to store and reuse energy for back-up, peak-shaving and regenerative energy.”

Ampelmann says that the results of this are that the power required is only 10% of that of its fully hydraulic systems.

Targeting Innovation

Continuous innovation to improve the energy efficiency of its systems has flavoured Ampelmann’s growth as a global company. Improving the design of the W-type is a never-ending process that in the short and long term will result in major advances to how Ampelmann designs and constructs its motion-compensated gangways, the company says.

Crucial to this innovation process is the adoption of modularity within the design philosophy. Through modularity and standardisation, the submodules of each system can easily be replaced, repaired, assembled and refurbished, leading to more efficient design loops and enhanced options for customisation. This, Van Nes concludes, ensures that all gangways suit the specific needs of individual clients.

The first W-type is expected to begin operations in Q4 2023.