• Journal of Ocean Engineering and Technology
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• v.29 no.3
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• pp.207-216
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• 2015

Amanifold is one of the essential subsea oil and gas production components to simplify the subsea production layout. It collects the production fluid from a couple of wellheads, transfers it to onshore or offshore storage platforms, and even accommodates water and gas injection flowlines. This paper presents the basic design procedure for a manifold frame structure with novel structural verification using in-house unity check codes. Loads and load cases for the design of an SIL 3 class-manifold are established from a survey of relevant industrial codes. The basic design of the manifold frame is developed based on simple load considerations such as the self weights of the manifold frame and pipeline system. In-house software with Eurocode 3 embedded, called INHA-SOLVER, makes it possible to carry out code checks on the yield and buckling unities. This paper finally proves that the new design of the manifold frame structure is effective to resist a permanent and environment load, and the in-house code is also adaptively combined with the commercial finite element code Nastran.

• Ocean Systems Engineering
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• v.2 no.2
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• pp.99-113
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• 2012

Steel Catenary Risers (SCR) are the simplest and often the most economic solution compared to other riser types such as flexible pipe, riser towers, top tensioned risers, etc. The top of a SCR is connected to the host platform riser porch. The other end of the SCR connects to flowlines from subsea wells. The riser touchdown point (TDP), which is the location along the riser where contact with the sea floor first occurs, exhibits complex behaviors and often results in compression and fatigue related issues. Heave dynamic responses of semisubmersibles in extreme and operating sea states are crucial for feasibility of SCR application. Recent full field measurement results of a deep draft semisubmersible in Hurricane Gustav displayed the considerable discrepancies in heave responses characteristics between the measured and the simulated results. The adequacy and accuracy of the simulated results from recognized commercial software should be examined. This finding raised the awareness of shortcomings of current commercial software and potential risk in mega investment loss and environmental pollutions due to SCR failures. One main objective of this paper is to attempt to assess the importance and necessity of accounting for viscous effects during design and analysis by employing indicator of viscous parameter. Since viscous effects increase with nearly third power of significant wave height, thus newly increased metocean criteria per API in central Gulf of Mexico (GoM) and even more severe environmental conditions in Western Australia (WA) call for fundamental enhancements of the existing analysis tools to ensure reliable and robust design. Furthermore, another aim of this paper is to address the impacts of metocean criteria and design philosophy on semisubmersible hull sizing in WA and GoM.

• Korean Chemical Engineering Research
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• v.52 no.6
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• pp.814-820
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• 2014

In this work, hydrate inhibition performance of water-soluble polymers including pyrrolidone, caprolactam, acrylamide types were evaluated using torque measurement and high pressure differential scanning calorimeter (HP ${\mu}$-DSC). The obtained experimental results suggest that the studied polymers represent the kinetic hydrate inhibition (KHI) performance. 0.5 wt% polyvinylcaprolactam (PVCap) solution shows the hydrate onset time of 34.4 min and subcooling temperature of 15.9 K, which is better KHI performance than that of pure water - hydrate onset time of 12.3 min and subcooling temperature of 6.0 K. 0.5 wt% polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP) solution shows the hydrate onset time of 27.6 min and the subcooling temperature of 13.2 K while polyacrylamide-co-acrylic acid partial sodium salt (PAM-co-AA) solution shows less KHI performance than PVP solution at both 0.5 and 5.0 wt%. However, PAM-co-AA solution shows slow growth rate and low hydrate amount than PVCap. In addition to hydrate onset and growth condition, torque change with time was investigated as one of KHI evaluation methods. 0.5 wt% PVCap solution shows the lowest average torque of 6.4 N cm and 0.5 wt% PAM-co-AA solution shows the average torque of 7.2 N cm. For 0.5 wt% PVP solution, it increases 11.5 N cm and 5.0 wt% PAM-co-AA solution shows the maximum average torque of 13.4 N cm, which is similar to the average torque of pure water, 15.2 N cm. Judging from the experimental results obtained by both an autoclave and a HP ${\mu}$-DSC, the PVCap solution shows the best performance among the KHIs in terms of delaying hydrate nucleation. From these results, it can be concluded that the torque change with time is useful to identify the flow ability of tested solution, and the further research on the inhibition of hydrate formation can be approached in various aspects using a HP ${\mu}$-DSC.