Umbilical Cable

What Is an Umbilical Cable?

Umbilical cable refers to a technology that delivers vital consumables, signals, or energy through a hose or line. With a name derived from a mother’s power umbilical cord, Armoured Umbilical Cable can be any cable that carries a medium of vital importance for survival or control. It can describe numerous types of cable in different areas — for example, undersea transmission lines or the air lines supplying oxygen to divers from a boat. Other contexts can include uses in space suits or in the operation of remote-controlled vehicles.

What Are the Most Common Uses of Umbilical Cables Used?

The biggest users of subsea umbilical electrical cable are marine operations and the oil and gas industry. The cable might carry power to an offshore drilling rig or deliver hydraulic fluid while removing wastewater. Or it may deliver power, clean water, and a fast internet connection to people working on a floating oil rig. The same cable or another may remove wastewater and send raw crude oil to tanks onshore. The hoses can carry pressurized gases including air mixtures and industrial gases. Yet they can be used to connect almost any sort of equipment that’s been installed underwater to each other, ships, or control stations on land.

How Are Subsea Umbilical Cables Used?

Subsea umbilical power cable are used in diving, robotics, the military, and some aerospace applications. The subsea cable connects a ship, floating oil rig, subsea flow station, or other off-shore facilities with a logistical source. This could be anything from a well-equipped ship to facilities onshore.
The cables can also connect various items underwater. This includes underwater sensor stations, pumping stations, and subsea compressor units. It is similar to a power grid because it typically delivers electrical power, but anything else you want can be put into the thermoplastic hose or steel umbilical cable.

What Are the Benefits of Using Umbilical Cables?

Let’s use the example of underwater oil and gas exploration. A network of subsea umbilicals connects several drilling sites. All of these connect to a single ship that accepts and holds the crude oil pumped up by the drilling stations, while the ship or floating oil rig supplies power and consumables to the many smaller underwater drilling sites. You only need a single control hub, instead of having half a dozen ships overseeing an oil-producing area covering several hundred square kilometers. This dramatically reduces the cost of subsea oil and gas production. This is especially true when you’re sending chemical injection fluids to an underwater unit or supplying power to heat it up to prevent the formation of waxes that slow the hydrocarbon flow. You can install heating elements in the pipes to prevent the formation of ice on it, too. That makes umbilicals invaluable for maximizing output from oil and gas production systems.

HuaDong Umbilical Cable Designs

HuaDong Umbilical Cable has delivered more than 50 umbilicals worldwide over the past 10 years, using a wide range of technologies and designs to meet our clients’ needs. We have capacity to engineer and construct umbilicals that meet specific customer requirements.
Our systems can withstand high pressures and temperatures, ultra-deep waters, harsh environments and long distances. With our unique design we provide a robust umbilical with predictable performance during installation and service Our special system for packaging tubes and cables minimize longitudinal forces while offering greater internal and external strength, high fatigue capacity and with no restrictions on geometry.