The Deep Panuke PFC is a 20,000 tonne self-installing offshore platform located 250 kilometres from Halifax, Canada in the North Atlantic Ocean in 40 metres of water.
Longitude were initially instructed to conduct numerical analyses of the different installation options of the platform including a self-floating, and float-off from a barge. Longitude prepared hydrodynamic models of the barge and the PFC and connected them together with links with appropriate stiffness, damping and degrees of freedom. The installation was then discretised into a number of steps and time domain analyses were run to investigate the dynamic stability of the system and calculate the maximum forces and motions.
After the first phase of the work, the float-off option was selected for further analysis, and Longitude and GustoMSC developed an installation method utilising pneumatics and releasable struts. The analyses undertaken in the first phase were refined until a stable representative system was found. The derived installation method allowed the large deck to be transported to site on the deck of a barge and installed in a 1-1.5m Hs swell environment.
