In recent years, offshore oil and gas fields are being developed worldwide in increasingly deeper water. Offshore drilling and production projects are currently underway in water depths approaching 3,000 meters in several areas of the world. Seabed protection against fishing trawler and anchor movement damage is often required by the operator or cognizant authority. In addition, our post-9/11 world now requires that critical subsea cables, pipelines and related infrastructure be protected from intentional damage. One method of providing this necessary protection is by burying the cable or pipeline below the seabed. This paper briefly summarizes the range and capabilities of cable and pipeline burial and trenching vehicles that Perry Slingsby Systems has developed over the past 20 years. A specific focus of this paper is a description of Perry Slingsby Systems' latest deepwater cable/pipeline burial vehicles - the T-800 series. This vehicle has been designed to operate in 2,500 meter water depths and bury cable to a depth of 3 meters in soil strengths to 100kPa. This paper describes the vehicle's unique tool deployment system and cable burial performance. Additional sections in the paper briefly describe other major systems, including control system, propulsion system and powered track/free-fly optional mode system. Several of the systems discussed incorporate components and subsystems that reflect the cutting edge of today's technologies. The capability to effectively bury large power cables and umbilicals to this depth presented a number of technical challenges to Perry's engineers. To accomplish the performance objectives of the T-800, it was necessary to effectively and reliably deliver a relatively large amount of electrical power (600kW) at high voltage (4,160V) to a large vehicle in very deep water.
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