RRS James Cook Software Control Winch Drive Upgrade

RRS James Cook has a set of six electrically-driven winches and associated hydraulic outhauling equipment that were commissioned about ten years ago. The winches are used for oceanographic research. A winch typically consists of a Storage Winch and a Traction Winch; one of the winches consists only of a Storage Winch. The control system supplied by the OEM is based on two main controllers. These are industrial computers and are essentially ‘black boxes’. It is likely that these will not be fully supported into the future and that they present issues for the ongoing operation and possible future development of the winch equipment. The principle aim of the project is to replace the main controllers, implementation of new hardware is likely to affect other constituent parts of the Winch system. The new hardware will necessitate the writing of new control software, this will no doubt impact upon software running on the associated sub-systems. Examples could be the SCADA terminals and the drive system. It is possible that further hardware will also need to be replaced as a result of this.

The contract is to be up to 4 years with the required warranty, service and maintenance.

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