Other

Shandong Nanhai Airbag Engineering Co. Ltd.

William Wei Lee

James J Lee

Qingling Duan

Dianhua Zhao

Duan Qingling

Yu Guangfeng

Guangfeng Yu

Zhao Dianhua

An improved pistonless cylinder, including both single acting and double acting configurations, based on an Aramid fiber reinforced elastomer tubular which is highly stiff in radial direction against radial expansion and elastic in axial extension, so as to form a completely sealed, extendable and retractable pressure chamber and to be able to perform as well as, or better than, most of the conventional hydraulic cylinders in terms of load bearing capacities, maximum stroke distances and service durability. This improved cylinder employs no piston, piston rod, sealing seals or oil based hydraulic fluid, and utilizes non-metal materials to construct the majority of the parts for its extendable and retractable pressure chamber; therefore, this new cylinder can achieve significant weight and fabrication cost reduction. In addition, this new pistonless cylinder uses ordinary liquids, e.g., fresh water or seawater, as its hydraulic fluid, and can work directly as a hydraulic or pneumatic cylinder interchangeably without a need for much, if any, modification.

Pistonless cylinder

A simplified and improved pistonless cylinder based on an Aramid fiber reinforced elastomer tubular which is highly stiff in radial direction against radial expansion and elastic in axial extension, so as to form a completely sealed and extendable pressure chamber and to be able to perform as well as, or better than, most of the conventional hydraulic cylinders in terms of load bearing capacities, maximum stroke distances and service durability. This simplified cylinder employs no piston, piston rod, sealing seals or oil based hydraulic fluid, and utilizes non-metal materials to construct the majority of the parts for its extendable pressure chamber; therefore, this new cylinder can achieve significant weight and fabrication cost reduction. In addition, this new pistonless cylinder uses ordinary liquids, e.g., fresh water or seawater, as its hydraulic fluid, and can work directly as a hydraulic or pneumatic cylinder interchangeably without a need for much, if any, modification.

Pistonless cylinder used for offshore pile gripper

This invention discloses a new type of force bearing cylinder which does not use any piston and its related parts for pushing/pulling its stroke. The pistonless cylinder uses ordinary liquids, e.g., fresh water or seawater, as its hydraulic fluid. The pistonless cylinder can work as a hydraulic or pneumatic cylinder interchangeably without a need for any modification, and is basically maintenance free during its service life. As one example of its applications, the disclosed pistonless cylinder can be used for deepwater pile grippers in offshore platform installation.

Conventional ship launching airbags are made of several layers of rubber and fiber meshes bonded together by vulcanization. With the existing fabrication process, an airbag is strong in standing heavy pressure at its surfaces, but weak against the cutting by sharp edges of metal debris or oyster shells. An airbag's functional failure during a field operation can cause not only stoppage, but also explosion, hence a serious safety hazard. To overcome such structural weakness, a new type of airbags with anti-cutting capability is disclosed in which a conventional ship launching airbag is covered with a layer of anti-cutting armor made of steel cord ply sheets, a standard off-the-shelf product for the making of tires, embedded at the surface of the airbag's main body.

Anti-cutting airbag

An oil storage, loading and offloading system includes a submerged oil storage tank with multiple vertically placed flexible containers. The system directly connects to the topsides of an offshore oil production platform above water to assist oil loading and offloading operations. During loading, oil is pumped in and stored inside flexible containers, which are expanded to displace equivalent amount of water out of the oil storage tank; during offloading, oil is pumped out from flexible containers and the reduced volume of each contracted container is then filled in by the equivalent amount of water from the surroundings There is no physical contact between water and oil. The submerged tank on-bottom weight has a limited variation during the loading and offloading operations. This disclosed system can be utilized for fixed offshore platforms, especially for shallow water marginal field developments, and for deepwater floating platforms such as SPAR and semi-submersible (SEMI) structures.

Submerged oil storage, loading and offloading system

A conventional pneumatic fender has an outer protection cover composed of used tires and steel chains. Due to the high friction coefficient at the tire side surfaces and the ship motion induced high impact forces, the lateral friction forces could be very high. These high friction forces not only increase the wearing damages at the tire side surfaces, but also cause scratching damages to the paints on the ship outer shell. A new type of outer protection cover using plastic plates is utilized to replace used tires and steel chains in order to reduce the wearing damages to the fender and to reduce the scratching damages to ship outer shell paints. Such reduction should be able to help the shipping industry achieve cost savings from decrease of scheduled ship re-paintings in dry docks.

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Arcadia, CA, United States of America

William Wei Lee