High Manganese Steel for Mooring Chain ApplicationsHochmanganhaltiger Stahl für Anwendungen von Verankerungsketten

Floating production assets rely on mooring chain integrity to ensure safe operation. The offshore industry has identified a number of technical gaps in the industry’s knowledge on mooring chain integrity. This has limited the ability of designers and operators to reliably estimate the degradation of the mooring chain and to mitigate the risk of mooring line failures. The current code of practice recommends designing mooring systems based on uniform corrosion and factoring in a concurrent allowance for wear. A steel mooring chain retrieved from service exhibited both uniform and localized corrosion as well as wear damage. Pre-emptive chain replacements may be required if the observed degradation exceeds design expectations; such replacements can bear significant cost. Carbon steel is conventionally employed for mooring chains, however, there are significant incentives to explore new materials technologies with improved seawater corrosion and wear performance for mooring chain applications.