Design and Development of Modular Stepping Transportation System for Oil Rigs

Well locations of cluster well rigs and artificial island rigs are generally arranged irregularly. The relocation of drilling rigs between wellheads greatly restricts the efficiency and raises the cost of on-site oil and gas exploitation. To enable free movement of rigs among various wellheads, this paper develops a modular stepping transportation system for oil drilling rigs. The system adopts an eight-point layout for large drilling rigs and a four-point layout for medium and small-sized rigs. It can realize automatic translation in any direction and in-situ rotation of the rig. The translation process supports real-time monitoring, and motion errors can be automatically compensated. The system is equipped with three control modes, namely console operation, wireless remote control and touch screen control. Authority interlock is configured between different modes to meet control demands under diverse working conditions. Load calculation and deviation calculation are carried out to further verify that the transportation system satisfies the rig moving requirements, and the calculation results can provide references for the design of similar products in follow-up engineering.