Recently, two of Asia’s first wind turbine operation and maintenance mother ships were successfully launched, both adopting Shougang’s medium plates. The operation of this project fills the gap for specialized ships in the field of domestic offshore wind turbine operation and maintenance, adding another powerful tool for China’s offshore wind power development in the deep sea.

Offshore wind turbine operation and maintenance mother ships are the main transportation vehicles for the construction, operation and maintenance of offshore wind farms. They can quickly deliver the operation and maintenance team to the wind farm, provide services for the operation and maintenance of offshore wind turbines, minimize and reduce operation and maintenance time and cost, reduce wind turbine failures and shutdowns, and improve the economic benefits of wind farms.

With many years of technological brand advantages in the field of ship plate production and R&D, Shougang Jingtang successfully won the bidding for this project. The two wind turbine operation and maintenance mother ships mainly use high-grade ship plates made from Shougang’s medium plates for the working cabins and structural parts. The plates are mainly in thin and narrow gauges, with some sizes exceeding the rolling limit of the rolling mills and belonging to extremely thin and narrow gauge medium plate products with extremely high requirements for process design, operation level, equipment accuracy, etc. Due to limitations such as the large rolling temperature drop and ultra-narrow width, there were technological challenges such as high control difficulty and large rolling load. Meanwhile, due to the relatively small size of the ships, there were strict requirements for the overall weight, center of gravity and aesthetics of the whole ship. In addition, the ships need to be soaked in seawater all year round, so the customers put forward high requirements for the shape, surface quality and weldability of the steel plates.

Shougang Jingtang makes full use of its production-marketing-research platform and efficient collaboration among team members to provide customers with “one-stop” services including product quality, delivery time, product performance and after-sales services, jointly building Shougang’s ship plate brand. The Marketing Center of Beijing Shougang Co., Ltd. actively participated in bidding for projects in the shipbuilding industry at home and abroad, the Jingtang Manufacturing Department and the Technology Center comprehensively expanded the development and certification channels of new ship plate products, and the Medium Plate Division fully promoted technological transformation and upgrading. By adjusting the heating process parameters of steel billets and optimizing the high-precision plate shape control model of rolling mills, the final products received praise from the customer.