Contract win for University's “in depth” engineering experts
Contract win for University's “in depth” engineering experts
Keywords: Materials, Engineering, Offshore, Pipes
Materials engineering specialists at Sheffield Hallam University have won 1 year research contract worth over £135,000 from BP to look at how some of the equipment used in offshore oil fields reacts to the harsh environment around it.
The contract will involve developing new methodology for evaluating the structural integrity of the flexible riser pipes used in the Foinaven and Schiehallion oil fields, west of the Shetland Isles. According to the academics involved, it will offer valuable information for the management of current projects, but could also contribute to further enhance safety, environmental protection and business planning aspects of future sub-sea oil explorations.
The investigation will focus on the flexible risers which run from connecting turrets on the sea bed up to the Petrojarl Foinaven and the Schiehallionfloating production, storage and offloading (FPSO) vessels, 600 m above the surface. The research team, led by Dr Upul Fernando, a Senior Engineer from the University's Structural Integrity Research Group and Dr Robert Akid from the Centre for Corrosion Technology within the University's Materials Research Institute (MRI), will be generating relevant material information to assess fatigue, corrosion and corrosion-fatigue behaviour in the risers' tensile and pressure armour layers.
By developing complex 3D finite element models and using multiaxial stress analysis techniques to assess critical stresses in the risers, the researchers aim to give BP Britoil valuable guidance on how their equipment will perform.
According to Dr Fernando, the team's findings will be important for both existing and future operations.
“Predictive techniques developed through this programme and critical understanding of the fracture and fatigue behaviour of riser materials are useful to ensure the safety of existing risers and future development of technology for deep water sub-sea oil exploration,” he says.
The study is also aimed at understanding the corrosion behaviour of the materials used in the construction of the risers, and the likely fracture behaviour and estimation of fatigue life of the risers under their extremely hostile service environment. Dr Akid says that this aspect of deep water sub-sea oil exploration is not yet well enough understood. He comments that “damage accumulation modelling within engineering structures has not satisfactorily dealt with the combined effects of stress and corrosion. The BP project is a perfect opportunity for us to address this shortfall”.
