Ship Launching Inflatable Marine Rubber Airbag Customizable

3 THINGS (OTHER) MARINE AIRBAG MANUFACTURERS DO NOT WANT YOU TO KNOW

High quality marine rubber airbags are commonly used for projects in the heavy industry and marine shipbuilding sector.

Some of their most common uses are as follows:

Launching of 250-ton to 10,000-ton ships or boats. Sometimes even more
Launching of heavy large structures up to 10,000-tons
Hauling out of large marine structures including ships for repairs or recycle
Providing additional buoyancy for marine salvage projects or flotation needs (i.e. reducing draft of barges etc)
Mobilisation of heavy structures on land (a suitable alternative to transporters)

The usage of marine airbags are especially common in Asia, particularly in the shipbuilding space. However, there has been a misconception in the product, as well as large differences in pricing available in the market. In fact, many of the suppliers claim they are providing xx amount of layers, xx amount of weight etc to justify that their product quality is the same as many of the trusted manufacturers’ products. The vast differences in prices manage to confuse many of these airbag buyers. So, what are the “promises” usually made that a buyer should be careful of?

If you don’t know of marine airbags, and would like to learn more about it, here’s our product page.

Interested to learn how our on-site team can help with mobilisation, launching and hauling? Visit our service page.

1. Weight
It is not uncommon to hear certain suppliers claim something along the lines of “Our rubber airbag of this size weighs xx kg, it proves that our materials are of good quality and we give you more bang for your buck!” or when the weight info is more than a competitor, they claim that their airbags “have more materials in it so it is better!”. However, one should really understand what’s in an airbag, and how weight is affected. And by understanding more, you will see why this is a huge misconception.

Ship-launching airbags are made from rubber and strengthened by cords to provide sufficient bearing capacity. In the act of confusing buyers, some manufacturers actually have more unwanted foreign materials in the rubber sheets, which actually makes them heavier. Rubber is relatively less dense. The availability of more foreign substances in rubber will make them much heavier, but at what cost? It will substantially decrease the elasticity (which means it will fail much sooner after a couple of uses). Some even speed up aging of the rubber and massively decrease its usage safety.

Not all of them do this on purpose, though. Some have these added unneeded foreign materials in the rubber sheets due to dirty working environment or poor quality control procedures. Yet, an overly-aggressive salesperson sometimes mislead and even turn this “higher weight” info into a ‘good’ point to convince buyers. That is why in our facility, we ensure a clean working environment and set-up strict procedures to curb this issue. Only those materials intended to go into a quality marine airbag, goes into them.

Fact #1: Weight is not a good indicator of quality.

2. Raw Materials
Ideally, airbags should be made of new rubber material that adheres to the following standards:

ISO34-1 Tear Strength ≥400 N/cm
ISO37 Tensile Strength ≥18 MPa, Elongation at Break ≥400%
ISO1761-1 Hardness (Shore A) 60±10°
ISO815-1 Compression Set
ISO188 Requirements After Thermal Aging
ISO1431-1 After Static Ozone Ageing

The keyword here is new. HENGER uses recycled or reclaimed rubber material in airbag production. This is a huge red flag. Quality rubber makes the foundation of the whole “inflatable roller” idea, especially when it has to bear very high values of weight on top. Recycled and reclaimed rubber have substantially lower elasticity and has a very fast ageing rate which compromises the integrity of airbags. Use these recycled rubber airbags a couple of times and you will realise they burst very easily.

On the other hand, cords play a big role, too. These “tire cords” are supposed to be three-strand cords with more than 205 N strength per cord. Some manufacturers, like HENGER, procure and use a higher strength cord (above required standard) to ensure quality strength; but some other suppliers use two-strand cords with lower strength sometimes. There is also the difference with other cords like dacron cords etc. The difference in use of raw materials can have a cost difference of more than 65%!!

Fact #2: Raw materials in airbags are sometimes very different from one another, and hard to detect.

3. Fabrication Technology

Given all the materials are constant, do you think the end product will be the same? That is not actually the case. Even if both makers are using the same type of materials, the technology and expertise in production would set them apart. It is important for a manufacturer to suitably use certain types of automation and machines to standardise certain procedures, ensuring a very consistent output which minimises mistakes and errors. Skilful workers (and NOT general workers) are needed. With much experience, these personnel are the ones who will make sure every step is according to standard and will result in a consistent, high quality airbag. Details like the alignment, tightness and strength of parts should be inspected closely.

At HENGER, we practise a new innovative fabrication technology. This practice enables us to fabricate rubber marine airbags in a more consistent manner, enhancing strength by having multi-directional overlapping layers and minimise human errors.

In addition, we have highly qualified vulcanisation experts. When it comes to manufacturing these high pressure airbags, vulcanisation is a key process where over-vulcanisation or under-vulcanisation can bring very large performance differences!

Fact #3: Even with the same materials, it is impossible to expect two different manufacturers to have exact product result, because of different fabrication technology and manufacturing processes. Some are better than the others.

Specifications

Thanks for reading, if you have any interest or questions, please feel free to contact me.

Tel/WhatsApp:+86 15053332502

E-mail:echo-bai@hengergroup.com