What are the methods of salvaging shipwrecks?
When a ship sinks after a shipwreck, in order to avoid actual or potential dangers to maritime navigation safety and marine environmental protection, the owner of the sunken ship should salvage and remove the dangerous sunken ship in a timely manner. Other methods for salvaging sunken ships include: restoration of buoyancy, floating dock salvage, disintegration salvage, buoyancy material method, inflatable salvage, cofferdam salvage, foam plastic salvage, etc.
Sunken ships can be salvaged by a variety of methods. Each method can be used individually or in combination, depending on specific needs. The methods are:
- Salvage with sealing warehouses and pumping water.
After sealing the breach in the sunken ship, the water in the ship is pumped out to float the ship. Because it is difficult to seal tightly and difficult to operate when the wind and waves are strong, it is rarely used.
- Salvage with flotation airbags.
After inflating several pontoons underwater, the sunken ship can be brought to the surface by buoyancy. This method has large buoyancy, is reliable, and is easy and safe to construct.
- Salvage with crane.
Use steel cables to wrap around the bottom of the sunken ship, and use the lifting equipment on the salvage ship to lift the sunken ship. During salvage, two or more salvage ships are usually used to work together.
- Salvage with Styrofoam.
Inject closed-cell foam plastics with light specific gravity into the sunken ship cabin, drain out the seawater, and use the buoyancy of the foam to lift the ship. This method eliminates the inconvenience of threading steel cables at the bottom of the sunken ship, reduces or eliminates the work of sealing the cabin, and is also suitable for offshore use. Working in wind and waves.
- Cofferdam salvage.
When a ship sinks in waters with a small water depth, a weir can be built around the sunken ship, the water in the weir can be pumped out, the sunken ship can be sealed or repaired, and then water can be filled to float the ship and the cofferdam can be removed.
- salvage with inflatable drainage.
It is to pump compressed air into the sunken ship chamber to discharge the water body and float the sunken ship.
Different methods of salvaging a sunken ship can be used in different situations. For example, the buoyancy restoration method can be used to salvage sunken ships and sunken objects in rivers or shallow waters offshore. For sunken ships and sunken objects in the open sea or deep ocean waters, the floating dock salvage method can be used to salvage them. For salvage of smaller ponds, the cofferdam salvage method can be used. For sunken ships and sunken objects that cannot be salvaged as a whole, underwater disintegration and salvage methods can be used to salvage them. If the sunken ship has no salvage value, such as a cement transport ship, and it occupies the waterway, there is no need to salvage it, but it can be blown up directly in the water with explosives to clear the waterway.