Device for facilitating pipeline repair

A winding device (10) for winding a reinforcing strip onto a repair length on either side of a portion to be repaired (61) of a pipe (60) comprising:

• a carriage (20) rigidly connected to a reel holder (30),
• a reel of reinforcing strip (32) wound onto said reel holder,
• means (65, 15, 67, 17, 12, 13) for rotating said carriage around the circumference of said pipe and means (20, 40, 24, 26, 35, 37) for translating same along the longitudinal axis of said pipe so that said strip is wound around said pipe in the form of a helix,
• means (34, 44, 36, 46) for reversing the direction of the translation movement of said carriage so that, at each change of direction, said carriage moves in a direction opposite to the previous one and a layer of reinforcing strip is wound around said pipe, overlapping the previous layer,
• characterized in that:
• the means for translating said carriage further comprise a conveyor chain (40) comprising two strands (42, 43) moving between a first sprocket (35) and a second sprocket (37) in opposite directions, mobile means (24, 26) for attachment of the carriage to the chain adapted to cooperate with the strands of the chain.
• and in that the reversing means move the mobile attachment means of said carriage from one strand (42) to the other strand (43) and vice versa so that, when one of the mobile attachment means (24 or 26) becomes detached from one strand, the other mobile attachment means (24 or 26) cooperates with the other strand, said reversing means thus being actuated automatically during the rotation of said carriage around said pipe.