Self-closing hinge: Dogger Bank Phase A + B
Gatemaster Offshore is proud to have supplied the closing hinges for all the external working platform gates for a total of 190 turbines across the first two phases of Dogger Bank Wind Farm in the North Sea.
Image: Nicholas Doherty
The Project
Dogger Bank will be the world’s largest offshore wind farm located more than 130 km off the Northeast coast of England. When all three phases are complete, the wind farm will be capable of powering 6 million British homes.
After a successful collaboration on another OWF, Gatemaster Offshore got in contact with the owner and its fabricator, Smulders, to bring our hinge design forward for the Dogger Bank phases. In addition to existing features, the developer had another specific requirement:
- Certain gates in the project needed to stay open at both 90° and 180° for different loading purposes.
The Process
Once the project specifications had been agreed upon, Gatemaster Offshore engineered a small batch of samples to test with the designed gates. These included a new hold-open mechanism capable of holding the gates in the open position at the required different angles.
During the installation of these initial samples, it became clear that our intended fixing method was proving unsuitable for the on-board installation team.
We therefore went back to the drawing board to develop a new fixing position to work with the existing gate design.
The Solution
After the fixing method had been reconfigured to suit the customers’ installation, the final hinge was agreed upon and a delivery schedule created. Due to the size of the project, the hinges for Dogger Bank Phase A were supplied in batches with the first batch delivered in June 2021.
With the success of the Dogger Bank Phase A, Gatemaster Offshore was also specified on Dogger Bank Phase B. The final batch for this was delivered in January 2023.
