Thread Content
Recently, the steel piles of the \"Haiji No. 2\" jacket – Asia’s deepest deep-water jacket, which was independently designed and constructed in China – were successfully loaded onto a ship in Zhuhai, Guangdong. They are now set to be shipped to the Liuhua 11-1 oil field area in China’s South China Sea for offshore installation. The jacket steel piles, likened to giant \"steel nails,\" are the key structures that secure offshore oil and gas platforms firmly to the seabed at great depths. Compared to shallow-water jacket steel piles, deep-water jacket steel piles require extremely high technical standards in terms of construction, quality control, and offshore installation. The ability to design, construct, and install them independently has become one of the key indicators for measuring a country’s capacity for deep-water oil and gas development. “The “Haiki-2” jacket consists of 16 steel piles, each with a diameter of about 2.7 meters. The main piles are approximately 170 meters long, which is roughly equivalent to the height of 60 stories; the total weight of these steel piles is about 12,500 tons, which is equivalent to the total weight of 10,000 cars. Both the size and weight of these steel piles are the highest in Asia. It is reported that the steel piles of the \"Haiji-2\" jacket will be installed in areas prone to typhoons. These steel piles must withstand environmental loads of over 10,000 tons at depths of more than 300 meters, making their design and construction extremely challenging. To enhance the strength and toughness of steel piles, the project team applied S420 high-strength steel for the first time in domestic steel pile construction. This steel has characteristics such as high crack sensitivity and poor weldability, requiring extremely strict control over welding quality. The project team strictly followed the welding procedures, ensuring tasks such as pre-welding heating, interpass temperature control, and post-weld degassing were carried out. Through measures such as grid-based quality management and strict requirements for welder qualification, a comprehensive quality and safety framework was established throughout the entire process. As a result, the first-pass success rate for ultrasonic testing (UT) of the steel piles was 99.85%, while the first-pass success rate for magnetic particle testing (MT) was 100%. It is understood that this loading operation utilized Self-Propelled Modular Transporters (SPMTs) for roll-on loading. To address technical challenges such as the excessive length, heavy weight, and uneven weight distribution of the steel piles, the project team repeatedly optimized the methods used to \"package\" these piles, arranged the loading process in a logical manner, and adopted an innovative \"2-3-3\" framework approach. As a result, the time required to load each steel pile was reduced from 3 hours to 1.3 hours, thereby **improving the loading efficiency**. At the same time, the project team combined the onshore packaging frame for the steel piles with the sea transportation fixing frame for them, allowing the loading of the steel piles onto the ship and their fixing to be carried out almost simultaneously, which effectively reduced the welding work on board by about 80% for the construction workers. It is reported that once the loading of the 16 giant \"steel spikes\" is completed, they will be transported to the designated area of the Liuhua 11-1 oil field for installation, thereby laying a solid foundation for the establishment of Asia’s deepest deep-water jacket – the \"Haiji No. 2\" jacket – in the South China Sea.