Delete comment from: Dark Roasted Blend
You seem to have forgotten to talk about the ingenious construction of "Slip forming" of the concrete legs themselves-- (From Wikipedia):
The platform stands on the sea floor 303 metres (994 feet) below the surface of the sea and each of the continuous-slip-formed concrete cylindrical legs has an elevator that takes over nine minutes to travel from the platform above the waves to the sea floor. The walls of Troll A's legs are over 1 metre thick made of steel reinforced concrete formed in one continuous pour -"Slip forming) and each is a mathematically joined composite of several conical cylinders that flares out smoothly to greater diameters at both the top and bottom, so each support is somewhat wasp-waisted viewed in profile and circular in any cross-section. The concrete legs must be able to withstand intense pressure so are built using a continuous flow of concrete, a lengthy process that takes 20 minutes per 5 cm laid.
The four legs are joined by a "Chord shortener", a reinforced concrete box interconnecting the legs, but which has the designed function of damping out unwanted potentially destructive wave-leg resonances by retuning the leg natural frequencies. Each leg is also sub-divided along its length into compartments a third of the way from each end which act as independent water-tight compartments. The legs use groups of six 40 m vacuum-anchors holding it fixed in the muck of the sea floor.
Oct 26, 2010, 8:04:41 AM