A basic design of appliances for quick personal rescue from surface ice-resistant offshore structures (fixed and floating drilling rigs, drilling vessels) in case of fires or other emergency situations is proposed. The design provides increased personnel rescue operation speed from highup premises due to quicker lifeboat launch times. This design is also characterized by alleviating overstresses experienced by rescued personnel under lifeboat impacts against the ice, as well as reliability increase for quick escape appliances in fire and accident conditions. The appliance contains a braking system for decreasing the lifeboat launch speed along the lowering chute and shock absorbers for impact loading decrease.
Extension of works on developing fire-hazardous natural resources in sea areas with freezing waters (including Arctic regions) causes the necessity to create reliable simple in service appliances for quick personnel evacuation from fire-hazardous surface offshore structures in ice conditions. The described below appliance refers to life-saving appliances of offshore platforms and other structures. The proposed appliance is designed for quick personnel evacuation from surface iceresistant offshore structures (fixed and floating drilling rigs, drilling vessels) in case of fires or other emergency situations (in conditions of power-supply system failure).
Low speed of rescue operations, impossibility of use for rescue of people from premises positioned high above the ice cover, complexity and relatively high cost of the appliances and low reliability in emergency situations could be listed among drawbacks of the known personnel rescue appliances (Morfitt and Freeke (1999), O'Brien (1988), O'Brien, D. (2000), Tarovik et al (2012)).
The known existing rescue appliance could be divided into the following two large groups:
appliances, which provide vertical lifeboat launch with then help of cable systems;
appliances, which arrange lifeboat lowering by its movement in the vertical plane if vertical and horizontal speed components are provided launch and ensure lifeboat launch on the ice surface at considerable distance from the offshore platform.
