Active Heave Assist provides heave compensation for vessel motion to within 10cm
Cornwall-based specialist engineer MintMech has developed a heave-compensation system to combat the up-and-down motion of a vessel, which prevents delicate operations, to enable more precise geotechnical drilling and subsea operations
Active Heave Assist (AHA) provides heave compensation for vessel motion to within 10cm, ensuring the drill bit remains stable relative to the seabed.
Offshore geotechnical drilling operations have traditionally relied on passive heave compensation, which can be effective but is limited by friction and vessel motion. Passive systems can struggle to maintain drill string stability in soft ground conditions, during delicate downhole logging when working off-bottom.
Jack Berryman, cofounder of MintMech, said, "Active Heave Assist fundamentally changes the way we can work offshore. By retrofitting AHA to the existing passive system, we can actively control the position of the bottom hole assembly (BHA) and enable reliable core and data collection in ground and metocean conditions that previously made it practically impossible. Our ability to combine accurate BHA positional control with automated weight on bit limits is transformative."
The AHA system has already been deployed in a commercial campaign in the West Pacific, where it operated on a rocky, uneven seabed under deep-water conditions. The system enabled advanced downhole logging operations that required accurate positional control of the bottom-hole assembly.
MintMech cofounder, Laurie Thornton, said, “High-quality cores and accurate downhole data will be very useful to the European offshore wind sector, where developers are urgently seeking to optimise foundation designs and reduce costs. AHA can enable more efficient foundation design and significant savings on steel, time and embodied carbon.”
MintMech continues to develop AHA enhancements, including automatic weight-on-bit (AWOB) and auto-core-run (ACR) control systems, to enhance drilling performance across various seabed conditions.
Theo Cleave, commercial manager at MintMech, said, “In offshore wind, the low-hanging fruit is disappearing fast. As more projects are completed, developers must revisit areas previously considered unattractive or unviable, like very soft ground, rocky ground or deeper water. Having a better understanding of the seabed conditions could open up these locations for development.”
AHA can be retrofitted to a vessel’s existing passive heave compensation system with minimal disruption to a normal mobilisation. Multiple failsafes and an intuitive control panel make the system easy to use for the driller, who can choose the level of automation based on their experience and override it if necessary. AHA and AWOB can also be deployed for large-diameter marine drilling and construction applications, for example, the installation of FLOW foundations.
