Launching & Recovery Systems

 

Launching and recovery systems are also known as LARS and are mainly used in the marine and offshore industry to launch or recover a lifeboat or any other marine equipment. Launching and recovery of marine unmanned equipment is always a high-risk job operation and can cause a life threat to the onboard crew. LARS has minimized this risk and has made the launch and recovery a bit easy. Any vehicle or any other payload is brought in or out of the host ship without any damage. This is a system on ship’s deck to recover anything from the water or launch anything in it. Let us see some uses of LARS systems.

·         In case of emergency, a lifeboat can be launched from this system without any outside help.

·         Launching any diving unmanned equipment.

·         Launching small boats.

·         Recovering of lifeboats.

·         Even NASA used LARS to recover astronauts if the space capsule has landed on a water body.

·         A full size torpedo can also be launched for this vessel.

 Real Power Company has patented its own LARS system which is based on Catahead Style LARS System. This technique allows the system to apply breaks in case of any failure which is the first of LARS system to do that without the use of any heavy-duty winches. In catahead style, the lifting power is placed in a small catahead due to which the tension on the cable wound will be less. As a result of this low tension, there is no need of heavy LARS frame and drive assembly thus increasing the life span of the system.

 Low tension eliminates the need for any heavy-duty cable tensioning equipment and gives the system flexibility to work on different loads. Low tension on the system means that the reel can be positioned anywhere onboard and even below the deck line.

 This system is so efficient that it does not require any operator during the launch and recovery of any equipment due to its auto management of cable tension. This formula consists of 3 patents which are:

 Catahead mounted on an extendable boom

·         ROV cable reel

·         Failsafe parking & emergency brakes.

 Rests of the non patented parts are latch & rotate module, hydraulic Power unit, downline Winch, umbilical reel or IWOCS reel, hydraulic power unit, and subsea control module. Catahead LARS system does not require any knifing of the cable and is easier to maintain with small footprints. This is one of the best LARS systems and can be used for various purpose with minimum human interaction that minimizes onboard life risk.