Marine Operations undertake many different types of research and development projects to further advance scientific research. These engineering developments can range from small modifications to off-the-shelf equipment to suit a specific project, to full scale design and development of new data acquisition equipment such as our new mutibarrel rockdrill. The latter was funded by a NERC infrastructure grant.

Development times for specific projects can vary from a few days for small projects to a number of years for large scale research and developments. Our R&D department now use 3D parametric computer modelling to further reduce development times and also carry out finite element analysis on new concepts to reduce the risk and improve safety of components.

Current research & development projects:

• hammer corer
• articulated downpipe camera
• sub-sea sensor probes
• sub-sea gravity meter