Van Oord, a world leading dredging company, was the first to order the recently developed intelliwinch system for the IJmuiden maintenance contract. Recently the system has been delivered and installed on the survey vessel Jacoba IV. Following installation it took only a day to start with the nautical depth survey work. The first day of operation a production of 100 vertical density profiles was realized.
The IJmuiden maintenance contract performance is based on the 1.2 ton/m3 mud density criterion to be measured with the DensiTune system. A complete survey comprises of more than 200 measurement locations and manual operation was no option. The Intelliwinch was chosen to realize short turn around times with minimal operator intervention.
The fully automated process reduces cycle time by using external sensor input like multibeam nadir depth. Winch speed is varied depending on the cycle phase: High speed in water column and reduced speed in measurement section. Several stop criteria can be chosen, like speed over ground limiter for safety purposes.
Though primarily designed for the Tune systems the Intelliwinch will be very practical for other sensor like OBS, VSP, etc.