The Subsea Soil Jetting (SSJ) tool estimates the jetting production of soil by subsea equipment and accurately simulates the jets’ three-dimensional trajectories.  Furthermore, its graphical display enables the engineer to quickly and easily determine the jets’ degree of overlap and the soil clearance of for instance a jetting sword, a cable burial or a trench.

SSJ can simulate jetting silt, sand and clay, all of which are granular or cohesive soils.  Modern linear algebra is used to portray the jet beams’ three-dimensional geometry thus allowing the modelling of any jet configuration, including their position and orientation.  The tool’s applications include:

• Drag head heel jets
• Mass flow excavation
• Jet trenching
• Water Injection Dredging (WID)
• Hopper and ladder jets

 

SSJ has been validated using physical modelling and field measurements, with the tool’s model being able to help even the most experienced dredging professionals to determine the effect of certain soil characteristics on jetting production.

SSJ is a ready to use tool, which forms part of in2Dredging’s toolbox, and further enhances i2D’s estimating capabilities.  As SSJ reliably estimates jetting production rates, these are readily transformed into reliable schedules or robust cost estimates.

Once the jet configuration and the soil characteristics have been entered into SSJ, it can assist with:

• Estimating jetting production for all subsea equipment and any soil type
• Designing installations, including pump flow and pump pressure ranges, as well as the ranges of various nozzle diameters, orientation and positions, to achieve maximum jetting production using the lowest possible energy per cubic meter for various soil conditions
• Determining the resultant force of the jets to ensure control is retained over the positioning of subsea equipment components and to allow them to be dynamically tracked
• Providing detailed comprehensive insight into the jets’ penetration depths, their trajectories, their potential overlap and their soil clearance for any given geometry.
• Analysing and evaluating subsea equipment jetting performance

 

Note that a small up-front investment in jet modelling may result in sizeable savings during a project’s execution phase and over the lifespan of subsea equipment.