This is a milestone project for Marine Systems as it intends to develop the site into an international centre of excellence for building submarines.
Construction of the facilities is already underway in Kiel where thyssenkrupp Marine Systems is setting up a shipbuilding facility and developing the site into an international centre of excellence for manufacturing submarines.
Marine Systems will start working very soon on the largest order in its history approximately €5.5bn for the supply of six identical submarines to be completed by 2034. Four of the submarines will be delivered to the Norwegian Navy, two to the German Navy.
“We are very pleased that we were able to convince our customer Marine Systems of the excellent capabilities of our process crane technology in the context of this very demanding and future-oriented project. As a result, we will be supporting Marine Systems in the implementation. The high travel and positioning accuracy of the cranes will be required, for example, when two submarine sections weighing over 100t each have to be precisely positioned by two cranes and four travelling hoist units to assemble the hull,” said Dr Thomas Bönker, senior VP, Process Cranes:
Demag process crane technology will support the building of these submarines. The individual sections of the submarines will be manufactured in seven bays. The bays are each equipped with two 150t crane installations with a total four travelling hoist units each that run in synchronous operation to handle the individual sections. Demag is building the 14 double-girder process cranes with three different spans ranging from 16.25 m to 35.40 m.
For the 14 cranes, Demag will use its SAW concept consisting of several features that increase the performance, service life and precision of the cranes. These include; optimized rope lead-off on the hoists (to extend the service life of the hoist ropes), extended monitoring of the hoist brake (to improve safety), electronic overload protection with a load spectrum recorder (to determine the remaining service life of the hoists) and 24/7 online support.
The SAW package includes additional benefits such as load-sway damping, which increases safety at work when handling the heavy loads while at the same time enabling very precise positioning of the heavy submarine sections.
Automatic adaptation of the speed to match the weight of the load (extended speed range) increases productivity without compromising the high level of safety. Synchronization of the long-travel, cross-travel and hoist drives in master/slave mode allows for precise synchronous operation of two cranes and up to four travelling hoist units.
Marine Systems will begin to build the six class 212CD submarines in 2023. By then, Demag will have manufactured, delivered and commissioned the 14 process cranes.
