From A to Sea

RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

The marine and offshore industry is a challenging field in which many RIS customers operate daily. Developments are progressing rapidly, and products must meet high quality standards. To support our customers effectively, we have made significant investments in our R&D department and testing facilities in recent years.

We can manage the entire development, production and final testing of rubber products in-house, ensuring short lead times and controlled costs for our customers.

Rubber for protection

RIS produces a range of products, including large metal-reinforced seals and hopper door seals for trailing suction hopper dredgers. For vibration-free mounting of ship engines, we manufacture bearing pads in various shapes and sizes. Rubber fenders ensure ships and quay walls remain undamaged during docking.

What is a rubber fender?

preventing vibrations

ABSORBENT SHOCK PADS

RIS Rubber has extensive experience in developing and producing shock pads used in offshore jack-up platforms. These platforms navigate to a location and anchor themselves by lowering their legs to the seabed. Once positioned, the platform is raised to the desired working height using a jacking system and secured in place. Our shock pads absorb vibrations, improving working conditions on the platform and reducing wear on its systems. By integrating load cells into these shock pads, the forces can be continuously monitored.

What is a shock pad?

BOTTOM DOORS

Bottom door profiles are found in dredging vessels, also known as trailing suction hopper dredgers. These are seals that ensure the large doors at the bottom of the ship remain properly closed during dredging operations. RIS produces many of these bottom door profiles.

Dredging vessels ‘suck’ the soil-water mixture into the ship’s hold – the hopper. Once full, the ship travels to a suitable location to unload the material. This is done by opening the large bottom doors located beneath the ship. During dredging, these doors must remain securely closed.

Between these doors and the ship are RIS bottom door profiles, which provide the necessary seal. There are various designs and sizes of bottom doors. RIS manufactures bottom door seals that fit perfectly with these different designs. By creating corners and lengths, which are later vulcanised together on a vulcanising press, a complete seal is formed. The largest seal we produce measures an impressive 10×10 metres and weighs over 500 kilograms.

RUBBER TO METAL SEAL

In addition to solid rubber seals, we also produce seals reinforced with metal. Combining these materials provides a product with the flexibility of rubber and the strength of metal.

A good example of a rubber to metal seal is the combi-rings used in dredge valves. A dredging vessel can quickly transport large amounts of material through large pipelines running across the ship. These pipelines carry a mixture of sand, gravel and water and can be closed off using gate valves. This type of seal consists of two large rubber rings reinforced with steel rings. The rubber rings are made from two different hardness grades.

For these seals, we use both hard and soft rubber grades, which are vulcanised together with metal rings in the mould to create a complete seal. The soft rubber reduces the force needed to close the valve, while the hard rubber is highly wear-resistant, ensuring the seal continues to perform effectively. The metal provides the reinforcement required for the high-pressure applications in which these seals are used.

The rings are mounted with their hard sides facing each other. When the pipeline is closed, a metal gate resembling a guillotine slides between the hard parts of the two rubber rings. The soft rubber allows the seal to compress, enabling the metal gate to push through. The hard rubber part of the seal presses against the gate and must therefore be highly wear-resistant. When the pipeline is opened, the metal gate is withdrawn, and the soft rubber pushes the hard sides of the two rubber rings back together, sealing the opening once again.

More about the partnership with Royal IHC