• Grant number: 11/51955-5
• Support Opportunities: Regular Research Grants
• Start date: September 01, 2012
• End date: August 31, 2014
• Field of knowledge: Engineering - Mechanical Engineering - Mechanical Engineering Design
• Principal Investigator: Juan Pablo Julca Avila
• Grantee: Juan Pablo Julca Avila
• Host Institution: Centro de Engenharia, Modelagem e Ciências Sociais Aplicadas (CECS). Universidade Federal do ABC (UFABC). Ministério da Educação (Brasil). Santo André , SP, Brazil

Abstract

On the last years, Petrobras has increased the number of the floating unity of oil production in deep and ultra-deep water and has plans for installing other soon, becoming the first company in number of these kind of unities. From ali kind of floating unities, the platform-ships or FPSOs (Floating Production, Storaging and Offoading) are the most important for their technical and economic characteristics. FPSOs produce, store and transfer oil and are built from the conversion of the hull of a tank-ship or from a new hull project. In face of this demand of use of FPSOs in Brazil, there is the needing of guarantee the structural integrity of these ships hull. Structural failures in FPSOs are devastating, causing the loss of human lives, pollution on the sea and economic losses. Traditionally, the FPSOs hull structural integrity evaluation is performed in a dry dock or in high seas by divers. These methods of inspection have the following disadvantages: the first provokes economic losses due to the oil production cycle stop while the second one is not so reliable (due to human errors possibility). At this scenario, a robotic system which is able to perform the inspection of a FPSO hull in high seas seems to be an economic and reliable solution. This research project purposes the project and construction of a robotic system (RS) to perform the inspection of a FPSO hull in high seas. The RS is classified as a hybrid robot due to its two modes of operations: on the free-flight, the RS uses thrusters and on the mode crawl, this uses motorized tracks to its locomotion. The research project has as focus the development of the robotic system and not of the inspection equipment. This last will be developed on the occasion of another research project. (AU)