SEABED BACKFILL PLOW AND METHOD

摘要

A BAS plow creates a V-trench along the linear route of a pipeline path and an instrumented bottle moving with the BAS plow collects BAS data indicative of the pitch, roll, heading, yaw, three dimensional positioning, speed and depth of the chassis, the shearing force applied to the seabed material and the applied tow force. The bottle can be swapped to collect the acquired data or an umbilical can be used to provide a real time stream of data. The BAS plow can simultaneously backfill the created trench, leaving an undisrupted seabed, or the pipeline can be laid in the BAS trench, which can also be made deeper and wider by additional trench cutting passes, significantly reducing the total time required for combined BAS and pipeline laying processes. The BAS plow can be released and retrieved over-the-stern of a towing vessel.

主权项

1. For backfilling spoil into a seabed trench, a plow comprising:
a chassis; a skid supporting an aft end of said chassis above the seabed; moldboards mounted on said chassis forward of said skid, said moldboards being sized and oriented to span the trench and funnel spoil disposed on the seabed laterally of the trench toward the center of the trench as the plow travels forward on the seabed; and a blade mounted on and spanning bottom edges of said moldboards to collect the spoil in its path as the plow travels forward on the seabed, said blade having a passage at a rear apex thereof configured to dispense spoil collected by said blade and funneled by said moldboards to said passage on top of a pipe disposed in the trench below said passage.