Interesting Ship of the Week – The new ‘Ramform W’ class seismic vessel

Updated: March 13, 2013 (Originally published September 7, 2011)

This week’s interesting ship is the new “Ramform W” class seismic vessel, two of which were ordered by Petroleum Geo-Services (PGS) earlier this year.

Our apologies to the naval architect that designed her, but wow, this is one UGLY looking ship, but apparently she’s highly functional.

The vessels are the fifth generation of the popular Ramform series and, once completed, will be the most technologically advanced seismic vessels featuring 3D seismic data acquisition and analysis capability.  The vessels are to be built to DNV class at Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd. in Japan.

The Ramform W-class are uniquely designed to have length of 104 meters and a very wide breadth of 70 meters for the increased stability needed in seismic modeling.  Alternatively, the series has adopted diesel electric as the main propulsion system for quiet operation.

“These new generation series are developed in much bigger size compared to the previous Ramform series. One of the main reasons to develop the new Ramform design in wider hull form was to increase the stability and results of PGS’s model tests on these new hull shape prove that these new design give better stability compared to the previous Ramform series,” elaborates DNV manager Johan Tutturen.

The advanced seismic technologies applied to the Ramform W class are targeted for the fast growing High Density segments, driven by deep water exploration and production in geologically complex areas such as Brazil, West Africa, the Gulf of Mexico and new markets in the North Sea.

DNV is to class the two Ramform series seismic vessels with advanced verification works including hydrodynamics analysis required by extreme principle dimensions and FMEA required by RP notation. The new “Ramform-W” vessels will have class notation +1A1, SPS, ICE-C, E0, HELDK, RP, CLEAN DESIGN,TMON, BIS, NAUT-AW, VIBR, COMF-C(3)V(3).

“DNV has an extensive experience with classifying the hull shapes for previous Ramform series. This is an opportunity for DNV to capitalize our experience with the Ramform series and to help the owner and the builder to further manage the possible risk associated with these unique, tailor-made vessels,” concludes Johan Tutturen.

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