More about our Soft Landing Cylinder

At Kvenna, our Soft Landing Cylinder (SLC) was developed to address the challenge of delivering smooth, controlled landings of heavy subsea modules and equipment. With a continuous-damping design at its core, the SLC eliminates the peak loads associated with traditional hole-based dampers — offering both performance and reliability in the harshest environments.

Unlike conventional designs where blockage of sequential holes leads to short-term peak forces, our solution uses a replaceable damping element that allows broad modular adjustment while keeping the housing, piston and refill system standardized. This design philosophy enables cost-effective production: only the damping insert is bespoke, while the rest of the assembly uses established components.

The SLC is also engineered with precision in mind — no welded connections are used in its construction. By avoiding welds, we maintain full control over material properties (no heat-affected zones), improve surface finish (reducing NDT demands) and eliminate residual weld stresses that can compromise dimensional accuracy.

From shallow depths to 3 000 meters below sea level, our cylinders absorb forces from 2 to 200 tonnes in standard configurations, and can be customized to handle up to roughly 280 tonnes by adapting stroke or initial speed. They are available in carbon steel with cathodic protection or stainless super-duplex materials — ensuring durability in subsea environments.

Key strengths include:

• Cost-efficient design thanks to modular damping inserts
• Compact size and high force capacity
• Advanced and smooth damping behavior
• Proven subsea field performance

Typical applications span:

Manifolds (small to large), HIPPS modules, running-frame systems and pig-launcher assemblies. On customer request, Kvenna is also able to engineer land-based variants of the SLC — where ambient air no longer suffices as damping fluid and a combined supply/expansion tank is introduced.