Bardex Mooring System Takes Home Woelfel BMEA Award

U.S.-based engineering company Bardex has won the 39th Annual Woelfel Best Mechanical Engineering Achievement Award for its Off Vessel Tensioning (OVT) BarLatch mooring system.

The American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) confers the prestigious award to recognize a product, device, or system that best reflects innovation in mechanical engineering to solve problems, improve design, or maximize performance in the oil and gas industry.

Although the Woelfel BMEA award recognizes mechanical engineering innovations that serve the oil and gas industry, Bardex’s OVT method is also applicable to the offshore wind industry

The Bardex technology was selected from among five finalists at the Offshore Technology Conference this month in Houston.

Bardex designed the OVT method to work with its patented BarLatch Fairlead Stopper technology.

The product was developed as a result of working with a client that wanted to alleviate a long-term industry concern with IPB (in-plane bending) and OPB (out-of-plane bending) fatigue and chain wear at the conventional seven pocket underwater fairlead.

In conjunction, the client wanted to eliminate deck tensioning equipment. The BarLatchFairlead Stopper solution for OVT of mooring lines uses an Anchor Handling Tug Supply (AHTS) or similar vessel to apply the tension resulting in multiple benefits.

The OVT and BarLatch system can be used in any region of the world and is approved by major certifying bodies, including the American Bureau of Shipping (ABS), Bureau Veritas (BV), and Det Noske Veritas (DNV).

“Our job at Bardex is to work with the client to innovate the best solution to their unique challenge. In this case, it became an answer to an issue that many others experienced. We are honored that the American Society of Mechanical Engineers has acknowledged our design which is helping to maximize performance in the oil and gas industry,” said Nick Atallah, Director of Product Development at Bardex.