Bottom
crawlers are usually tracked vehicles, although in some cases an Archimedes
screw has been used instead. The primary use of tracked vehicles has
been for cable laying and burial. Cable burial vehicles, such as Perry
Tritech’s Gator (right), carry one of four tools for burying
purposes; water jets, chain trencher, wheel trencher or plow, which
are normally changed out depending upon soil conditions. Some systems
can be operated remotely or from a diver station onboard the crawler.
Other uses for crawlers are sediment preparation, pipeline trenching
and dredging operations.
Plows represent another large class of vehicles that have, over the years, become
very sophisticated. Plows come in all sizes and configurations, weighing up to 80
tons (81,280 kg), resisting tow forces to 250 tons (254,000 kg) and capable of shallow
water work to depths of 4,921 ft (1,500 m). There are as many different plow designs
as there are different soil conditions around the world. The figure below of one
of Soil Machine Dynamics (SMD) Ltd.'s line of ploughs illustrates the size of such
systems.
The
primary cause of damage to telecommunication cables is fishing. Deepwater
fishing to 6,562 ft (2,000 m) is conducted, therefor, burial just beyond
that depth may be desirable or required in the future. Some plows combine
a plowshare and water jetting capability. The primary tools used for
digging trenches with plows are the share or the disc. Not all plows
are used to dig trenches; some specialty plows are built just as back-fill
systems for filling in trenches dug by other plows.
Bottom
crawlers are usually tracked vehicles, although in some cases an Archimedes
screw has been used instead. The primary use of tracked vehicles has
been for cable laying and burial. Cable burial vehicles, such as Perry
Tritech’s Gator (right), carry one of four tools for burying
purposes; water jets, chain trencher, wheel trencher or plow, which
are normally changed out depending upon soil conditions. Some systems
can be operated remotely or from a diver station onboard the crawler.
Other uses for crawlers are sediment preparation, pipeline trenching
and dredging operations.
The
primary cause of damage to telecommunication cables is fishing. Deepwater
fishing to 6,562 ft (2,000 m) is conducted, therefor, burial just beyond
that depth may be desirable or required in the future. Some plows combine
a plowshare and water jetting capability. The primary tools used for
digging trenches with plows are the share or the disc. Not all plows
are used to dig trenches; some specialty plows are built just as back-fill
systems for filling in trenches dug by other plows.
