A recurring theme in the earning statements of oil and gas companies in recent months is the desire to survive not only “lower (prices) for longer,” but to use the current market downturn, and the resulting urgency, as an opportunity to reshape organizations to ensure that they are stronger and better able to thrive in the years ahead. Clearly, the industry needs to reduce costs and continue to innovate without compromising safety, but how? In other industry crunches, such as that experienced by automotive manufacturers in 2008–09, simulation played a key role in helping to reduce engineering design costs and lead times, while allowing manufacturers to continue to deliver new and innovative solutions.
While each company’s view on how to tackle this new paradigm will differ, for many it will be to continue the day job (deliver quality and innovative products and solutions), but at reduced development time and cost, without compromising safety. First principles-based engineering simulation tools will be a key enabler, as companies will increasingly rely on simulation-based design exploration. The initial driver will be to reduce engineering costs and time, but companies will also benefit from simulation as an innovation enabler.
Key to this has been the rapid improvement in computer hardware and software technology, as well as innovative licensing models that enable, rather than penalize, the use of high-performance computing and cloud solutions. Through the development of cloud computing, engineers now have ready and cost-effective access to computer resources that would have been unimaginable a decade ago. These improvements allow engineers to increase the number of design and operating conditions evaluated, and to move beyond the physical test to simulate real-world conditions at full scale, such as subsea separators with real process fluids at high temperature and pressure, or the behavior of a floating platform during a hurricane.
The importance of simulation is evident in three specific examples: two from the recent CD-adapco Oil, Gas, and Chemical Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) Conference, and one from outside our industry.
Fluid control valve (FCV) design by Schlumberger. At the CD-adapco conference, Reda Bouamra of Schlumberger shared the company’s work designing downhole FCVs. Scale deposition is a significant flow assurance challenge as it can reduce production, is costly to remediate, and can cause FCVs to jam, so Schlumberger’s objective was to develop an FCV that was less susceptible to scale. Its integrated CFD-experimental design process helped the company achieve this, while reducing engineering lead times and costs.
Schlumberger used CFD to design a testing program, ensuring it was as close to real well conditions as possible, and focused on the scenarios of most interest. It was able to validate CFD methods, enabling confident use of CFD to explore conditions and designs not tested.
One of the major benefits of simulation is the ease with which, having created the initial validated model, alternative designs or scenarios can be evaluated. This, plus the detailed information provided, enables engineers to come up with and efficiently test new, innovative solutions.
The industry’s move toward standardized solutions, reusable across multiple projects, introduces the need to verify equipment performance across a wide range of operating conditions. Validated simulation provides a cost-effective way to achieve this. The bottom line: An integrated CFD-experimental approach enabled Schlumberger to reduce the time and cost of the design process, while enabling evaluation of more designs in real well conditions.
Virtual wave basin at Technip. Jim O’Sullivan, vice president and chief technology officer at Technip USA, explained how Technip has used a “numerical wave basin” approach on projects ranging from full-scale, vortex-induced motion of a deep draft semisubmersible to ringing on a gravity-based structure. Ringing relates to structural deflections occurring at frequencies well above incident-wave frequencies.
Traditionally, the offshore sector has relied on physical testing and potential flow codes to evaluate hydrodynamic design. However, both present challenges: physical testing is expensive, time-consuming, and results have to be translated from model to full scale. Potential flow codes omit (or have to be tuned to mimic) important physical phenomena such as viscous effects and breaking waves.
Technip also integrates CFD and physical test programs by modeling the physical test beforehand and focusing the test on the right area, reducing the chances of failure. It validates the CFD against the test, then uses CFD to explore additional designs and conditions as well as behavior at full scale under real sea conditions.
Using a validated “first principles” design tool such as CFD means results do not have to be tuned, which reduces unforeseen problems late in the design cycle or field. The bottom line: By using CFD-based design exploration, Technip is able to efficiently optimize design, using a process that better represents operating conditions, thereby reducing risk.
Evolution of simulation in the automotive industry. The final example comes from outside the oil and gas industry. Whether it is a global economic crisis, new competitors entering the market, or changes in regulation, the auto industry has continually had to push to deliver innovative solutions at reduced time and cost.
Those that have succeeded have done so by progressively reducing reliance on traditional methods (expensive and time-consuming physical prototyping) in favor of extensive engineering simulation.
Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) undertook a strategic shift beginning in 2008. Its goal was to not only survive an economic downturn but to significantly expand its product offering and sales, while increasing profit. It wanted to undertake 40 “product actions” in 5 years. This is no small undertaking as today’s vehicles are highly complex with roughly 9,000 customer requirements and 3,000 assessments needed for sign-off.
The business drivers and challenges, as laid out by Andy Richardson, JLR’s head of simulation, could easily have come from an oil and gas outfit: develop new technologies while managing greatly increased system complexity; identify failure modes and establish countermeasures to achieve right first time design; reduce in-service failures; simulate the full range of use cases; and reach optimized product design efficiency and reduced production costs.
JLR is well on its way to reaching its goal of robust engineering design ready for sign-off before the first prototype is built, and it is doing so while delivering financially, with 15% or more growth in earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization in each of the past 5 years. The bottom line: By developing a culture of simulation during lean times, driven by a need to cut costs, JLR was able to embrace the innovation potential generated by these techniques and fully capitalize on opportunities as market conditions improved.
The current “lower for longer” market conditions present significant challenges to the oil and gas industry. For engineering design teams, it is also an opportunity to review practices and learn from others who have used downturns to reshape processes through simulation while cutting development time and costs.
Alex Read is the director, business development, oil & gas, for CD-adapco, the largest privately held CFD-focused provider of computer-aided engineering software. In 14 years at CD-adapco, he has worked as a project engineer, led the customer support team for northern Europe, and helped found CD-adapco’s operations in Houston and São Paulo, where he led both the sales and technical teams. Read now leads the company’s global activities in the oil and gas industry, focusing on helping oil and gas firms succeed through simulation.
