Floating equipment like floating drydocks and floating gates are essential assets in harbours, naval bases and shipyards. These special floating structures enable drydocking operations in order to manage ship’s maintenance or repairs.
Also called caisson lock gates, floating gates are mostly used in naval bases and large ship repair area to enable to close the dock by sinking them thanks to ballast systems using pumps or gravity. After that, the water can be removed and workers can reach the vessel’s hull, appendices and propulsion systems in the graving dock. This French invention was first developed in the seventeenth century for Rochefort arsenal dockyard and is now widespread all over the world. MAURIC developed experience in the design of such floating gate, especially with regards to stability, structural strength, water ballast and sealing systems.
The operation is different for the floating drydock because of its semi-submersible or float-on/float-off characteristics. Indeed, the drydock is partially immersed by using water ballast and the vessel is placed just above. Then, the water is removed using ballast pumps and the floating drydock comes up to the surface with the vessel on its deck, her hull being accessible and ready for the repairs. MAURIC offers design solutions of floating drydock with adapted lifting capacities and various internal width and length integrating cranes and maintenance tools, power supply, ballast piping, pumps, mooring equipment etc… in accordance with the latest regulations and classification society rules.
MAURIC has an experience in both of these floating equipment. This kind of specific steel structures are fully tailor-made to meet the operational requirements of the harbour or ship repair operators, the local structure and the environmental constraints (draft, tide, seismic, waves). MAURIC’s team is ready to design and engineer your next ship repair asset!