China Communications Construction Company (CCCC) has finished the technical research for a planned 10,000-tonne-class deep-sea engineering survey ship, clearing the way for construction to be prepared, according to Science and Technology Daily. The ship itself has not been built.
The milestone is an expert review. The first phase of a major CCCC research project on a BeiDou-based intelligent deep-sea survey system, led by its subsidiary CCCC Highway Consultants, passed assessment after two years of work by a team that included academicians, master engineers and specialist researchers.
The centerpiece is a design for a complete 5,000-meter-class deepwater drilling package. Engineers developed a large-bore top drive that supports several coring methods, a traveling-block heave compensation system that combines active and passive modes with a compensation stroke of plus or minus 3 meters and a 150-tonne load rating, and an automated system for handling operations across the deck. Heave compensation keeps the drill string steady while the ship rises and falls on swells.
For seabed testing, the team developed an integrated downhole cone penetration and bottom-hole static sampling method, producing an equipment plan for water depths of 1,500 meters with a penetration force of 100 kN. It also built a high-precision BeiDou time and space reference for offshore surveying and mapping, set out geophysical survey methods using the mother ship plus crewed and uncrewed boats, specified hydrological and meteorological survey equipment, and developed an integrated platform for data fusion and tiered warnings.
According to The Paper, the project has produced two pieces of hardware equipment, 31 technical plans, 14 software copyrights, 22 papers and 39 invention patent applications. The work was assessed as internationally advanced overall, with some parts described as world-leading. Core equipment was tested as principle models, and the team also explored how such a ship should be designed, built and operated.
The result is a blueprint rather than a vessel. If built, the ship would combine drilling, surveying, in-situ testing, geophysical exploration and ocean observation on one platform for offshore engineering, resource exploration and scientific research. CCCC has not given a construction timeline or cost.
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