Introduction to sea platforms
Since 1960’s multiple utopian ideas for floating cities arose, in response to climate change which are leading to growth of ocean levels due to global warming.
The futuristic looking Lilypad floating city concept is one of the most well developed ideas for a functioning sea community.
Envisioned as a floating ‘ecopolis’ for climate change refugees, Vincent Callebaut’s design resembles a water lily and would not only be able to produce its own energy through solar, wind, tidal and biomass technology but would also process CO2 in the atmosphere and absorb it into its titanium dioxide skin. Each of these floating cities could hold as many as 50,000 people.
All previous projects are based on passive platform not able to counteract changed in loads on the deck or tidal effect.
We are proposing a different approach where thanks to an active attitude control feature, the platform behaviour becomes much similar to a mainland.
FLOATING LANDS
INDEX
- What is it?
- How is it made?
- How does it work?
- Who is it for?
- Other application
- Why is it innovative?
- Benefits
- Weaknesses
- Where we are arrived
- Next steps
- What do we ask?
- What do we need?
- What could we do in the future?
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FLOATING house
1.What is it?
It’s a pneumatic stabilizing floating platform, semi-submersible and self-stabilising. It is a scalable surface area made of floating modules linked each others.
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FLOATING LANDS
2.How is it made?
Each module is an open bottomed cylindrical element which exploits the Archimede’s principle to adjust the balancing and position, height of the platform in response to varying loads on the deck or tidal effects.
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FLOATING LANDS
3. How does it work?
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Water flows are managed by an advanced electronic control system that opens or closes valves controling thus the compressed air flows in the various tanks under the platforms, regulating the hydrostatic thrust.
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The structure is made of lightweight concrete and reinforced by fibers in PVA (polyvinyl alcohol) , with glass fibers reinforcement that unlike conventional steel are completely corrosion resistant and increase the resistance to impulsive type stresses induced by the control actions on the structure.
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FLOATING LANDS
4. Who is it for?
It can be used for a variety of applications in the naval construction yard and in maritime civil engineering. This modular structure is ideal for a wide variety of applications as a wharf, as a residential district, an airport or a segregated industrial facilities, residential, floating cities.
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FLOATING LANDS
5. Other application
In the naval sector, a smaller version of the platform with major diving capabilities can be used for lifting heavy loads (ships, yachts), or to contribute to the transportation of tanks constituting the platform from the production area to the open sea where the platform it is assembled.
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FLOATING LANDS
6. Why is it innovative?
- Active control joined to concrete structures.
A synergy so far never used between fast response control systems with high reliability and flexible modular concrete structure.
- High reliability and security.
The architecture of the system uses automatic Failure Detection Identification and Recovery techniques: identification of anomalies, therefore, failed devices/items and autonomous fault recovery actions in order to ensure continuous and robust operation of the entire system.
- Modularity and cost effectiveness.
The architecture can easily change configuration to meet different operational requirements thanks to the lightness of the constituent modules and reduced production costs, moving, thus minimizing the yard’s interference with neighboring industrial and port activities.
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FLOATING LANDS
7. Benefits
- Minimum environment impact
The usage of compressed air and of large diameter tanks allow to obtain effective buoyancy adjustment actions with low speed of the water masses moved under the tanks, thus avoiding the propagation of pressure waves towards the seabed and damage to the ecosystem.
- Auto adjustment
The platform maintains the desired attitude, balancing and position, in response to changes in disposition and weight of loads on the deck or change in the height from sea level induced by tidal effects.
- Reliability and durability.
- Thanks to the use of FDIR techniques, fiber-reinforced concrete elements hermetically sealed, and the possibility of replacing them.
- Ecological.
- It can be located in protected areas such as marine parks, can take advantage of the swell and wind photovoltaic systems for autonomous generation of the electrical power necessary to its needs.
- Benefits/Costs.
Reduction of site logistics, authorization procedures and building, flexibility of implementation and design freedom, low cost electronics devices necessary, all these items bring the estimated building costs in the neighborhood of the 1,800 Euro/sqm.
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FLOATING LANDS
8. Weaknesses
- Unknown new issues arising
The innovative component of the platform design can bring out the need to study solutions to the problems currently unforeseeable, and further stage of experimentation and prototyping.
- Cost induced by great works.
Although the structure has a low cost of each element, their proliferation for the construction of large platforms lead to a rise in costs with the need to access to EU funds / state and / or large private sponsors.
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FLOATING LANDS
9. Where we are arrived
So far the project development has followed two phases: a theoretical approach , and a fast prototyping .
The design phase has been deployed with the hereinbelow steps :
- Models simulative structure / approach, ‘’model-based’’
have been developed a simplified model of a platform with 16 elements, model is representative of the dynamic both for mechanical point of view and tire system.
- Implemented a real-time Linux environment control system
Implemented a real-time Linux control system importorting the code of controller from the simulation environment, FDIR algorithms, acquisition and sensors and actuators commands.
- Architecture definition of the control and supervision center
- Definition of secure protocols for the transmission of telemetry and remote controls.
- Architecture of distributed control network.
- Protocols and FDIR strategies.
- Test campaign on a mathematical model of the structure.
- For the case F4.1.1 test, the activation of the solenoid valves has made it possible to stabilize the platform despite the load, in a time of about 59 sec, with an average residual error, of -2cm s.l.m.m.
- Checking of the anomalies detection criteria.
Fast prototyping phase.
A reduced size platform has been built and successfully tested. Performances show by mathematical model have been matched.
The theoretical model of the floating structure has been implemented, using a metallic carpentry. We have already launched in a dam a 6 Ton weight floating platform with a deck rectangular shape of 3×8 meters.
The pictures here below are showing the real platform used in our fast prototyping test campaigns
Floating lands dynamic tests with closed loop attitude controller.
Video is showing the performance obtained during test of dynamic attitude unbalance, induced by a second counterbalance of 1.2 ton placed on the platform deck. The attitude control has recovered the dynamic unbalnce in a few seconds.
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change life
10. Next steps
- Prototyping of a medium platform
Building of a medium size platform to be used again as test bench, exploiting with the acknowledgment and lessons learnt coming from the previous test campaign.
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FLOATING cities
11. What do we ask?
We are looking for sponsors / funders for the realization of a prototype allowing the necessary experimentation to evolution of the project.
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FLOATING ISLANDS
12. What do we need?
Funding to cover the costs of the following stages:
- prototyping of a medium platform with metallic carpentry. The minimum amount for this phase is 200 k EUR.
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FLOATING PLATFORMS
13. What could we do in the future?
With the support of sponsors, collaborations with other companies and adequate funds we could open the way for the creation of major platforms and transform the utopia of floating cities on the sea a reality for all of us.
GRUPPO INGEGNERIA DI SISTEMA 