Brevini DNV Type Approved Gearboxes for Marine and Offshore Applications

In any industry it is important that equipment is reliable and will function with minimum maintenance. However, in the Marine and offshore industries reliability is even more of an issue. It is often hard – or impossible – to source replacement parts and a failure can have serious consequences for both personnel safety and functionality. To create this peace of mind, there are a number of certifications that designers required to meet such as DNV, a world leading classification society with over a century of experience with maritime applications.

DNV Marine Approval Directive requires that certain marine equipment to be certified and specifies basic requirements to manufacturers as well as products. Specifying DNV type approved equipment enhances safety at sea and help to prevent marine pollution; it also allows for the free movement of equipment within the European Economic Area (EEA), consisting of the EU and AFTA Member States.

In maritime settings the successful functioning of power transmission equipment is essential; mooring winches and power transmission components especially need to have high levels of reliability. DNV type approved products will have stood up to the highest levels of testing for most applications and can be trusted to perform in the harsh environments that they will be subjected to.

Brevini has been supplying gear units into Offshore and Marine applications for many years. Past applications include winches, cranes, pipe handling and drilling equipment though in recent years a number of innovative tidal energy applications have also been supplied. It understands the industry’s need for reliability and has kept up with modern certification requirements; it has dedicated offices that deal solely with third party approvals and leads the field in new product development.

DNV type approval covers many Brevini products including:

• Standard planetary gear units up to 1 million Nm
• Rotating case winch drive gear units up to 500 KNm
• Slewing drive gear units up to 200KNm
• Hydraulic hoisting winches up to 5T

Brevini is also able to supply S.A.M.Hydraulik motors to form a hydraulic motor gearbox package that provides the reassurance of two well established brands. The S.A.M.Hydraulik range includes fixed displacement orbital motors for lower power applications. For high powers Brevini can offer S.A.M.Hydraulik axial piston motors with both fixed and variable displacement. Brevini engineers are able to assist with the optimum selection of gearbox and motor combination for any given application.

To support the type approval, Brevini engineers are also able to provide gearbox life calculations with specialist software based on customer duty cycles; this can be included with the type approval at no extra cost. For some applications a full survey of load carrying components, this can also be provided at a small cost; 3.1 certification is also available for these products.

As with all industries there are a number of certification societies that different companies may adhere to which all require stringent testing. Brevini is able to acquire suitable type approval from most bodies, including Lloyds and ABS, for products that it supplies into maritime applications.