The Key Technology Research On Automatic Flange Connection Tool For Sub-sea Pipeline

Along with the wearing out of petroleum resource, the exploitation of petroleum resource has been from land to ocean, shallow sea to deep sea. The researching subject rooted in the national 863 sub-project. It had a deep research on the automatic tool for sub-sea pipe connection, and made an important step in exploitation of deep sea energy sources.It researched the sub-sea tie-in system primarily, ascertained the boundary condition, and made a detailed design of pipe and flange. This invention related to a diverless tie-in system, which used an underwater robot ROV, abbreviation of remotely operational vehicle, to control a series of related tools in the whole process.It invented an automatic flange connection tool which was used to connect the underwater pipeline with flange. It is consisted of nut magazine tool and bolt magazine tool. NM is a tool which carries nuts and screws down to the bolts, while the BM is a tool which carries bolts and inserts them to a couple of flanges. On the beginning of pipe connection, the NM is deployed on the pipe welded swivel ring flange, and the BM is deployed on the pipe welded common flange. In the end, the pipes can be connected closely with the cooperation of the both tools.It designed a new automatic pull-tensioning and position compensation tighten system which was different from former methods. It used a converse tighten method to complete the flange connection for deep sea pipeline. The most important instrument is the pull-tensioning wrench with the difference from formers in the aspects of automatism, tensioning method, position compensation, torque control and the application of sub-sea flange.It used a software ANSYS to statics analysis and a software ADAMS to kinematics analysis of the wrench system, and proved the framework intensity's reliability and movement process's reasonableness.