The W-type: the building blocks of the future

The company’s dedication to increase the safety and efficiency of offshore operations has led to a growing portfolio of systems that suit regional and global demands. The coming year will see the addition of a new system to Ampelmann’s fleet, the W-type – a system that is specifically designed to serve the needs of the growing SOV/CSOV market. With three systems already sold, the company is poised to set a new benchmark for energy- and design efficiency. 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.

Kees-Jaap van Nes is senior project manager at Ampelmann and oversees the development of the W-type. He and his team are hard at work, aiming to bring the solution to the market by the end of 2023. A naval architect with ample experience as an engineer and project manager for several major shipping companies, Van Nes understands the shipping world like no other.

“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.”

An electric and energy efficient system

Though the W-type is not the first system within Ampelmann’s fleet without the 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 &Gas,” Van Nes says, “but now we are moving back to where we were founded for. When setting up a lot of wind farms you 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 to trolleys.”

“The typical Ampelmann systems”, he continues, “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 compensate the motions there.”

Perhaps the most distinctive feature of the W-type is that it is fully electric. 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. As Van Nes explains, “I think the main term is modularity here. We started with the electrical L-type and then we took those lessons to the electrical A- and S-types and that’s working very well. We made the next logical step to the W-type. So, developments are continuing on the same type of innovations: improving electrical control.”

There are many advantages to electrically controlled systems. Like the company’s electric A-, L- and S-type, 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.”

“This is what makes our systems truly unique as one of the results of this is that the power we require is only 10% compared to our hydraulic systems. Not only are the power requirements less, and that’s energy saving, but it also means that the system doesn’t require an HPU and that vessels need fewer engines, fewer generators and fewer cables to power up our system.”

Innovations and modularity

Continuous innovation to improve the energy efficiency of its systems has marked 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. As Van Nes explains: ”My target is to build the systems to better understand how they work in the field, and then continue with improving the design. As some of the W-types will go on existing vessels and others on newly built SOVs, there are a lot of questions to be answered for each individual system we construct, so it is essential to work closely with our clients and listen to their specific requests.”

“As we have recently ordered most components, and will begin assembly in Q2 2023, we have already made some promising upgrades to our initial designs. We added automated doors to the elevator to minimise the number of people that need to be on deck as well to maximise the efficiency of trolley operations on the 1.2m wide gangway. We also designed a remote workstation that includes a new control panel and live video feed to ensure our operators can communicate effectively with the DP officer and are safe and comfortable on the bridge during long offshore operations.”

Crucial to this innovation process is the adoption of modularity within Ampelmann’s 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 ensures that all gangways suit the specific needs of individual clients. As these modules can be scaled up and down, Ampelmann’s current and future offshore access solutions will benefit greatly from the development of the W-type. According to Van Nes, “we are committed to the idea of modularity, and our work on the W-type has already begun to have a positive impact on our design methodologies. To give two examples, we built a design tool and a new gangway tip for the W-type, where we needed them, but we designed them specifically as modules, or blocks, that should fit straight into our other systems.”

Made by Ampelmann

Constant innovation is part and parcel of designing a new system, and this is very fine adaptive engineering that Ampelmann conducts entirely within the company. “We do it all in house, with our own people,” says Van Nes. “Of course, this is made possible by the knowledge, expertise and quality of our main suppliers, but the software, motion compensation and everything else is all built and designed internally. I think that’s also our expertise, and that’s why we can sell these gangways, because we have 60+ systems and they are working so our clients trust that we will make it work.”

The first W-type is expected to begin operations in Q4 2023. Find out more about the system here.

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