HyperWorks' Impact on Subsea Oil and Gas Industry: A Duco Case Study
Technology Category
- Sensors - Haptic Sensors
- Sensors - Utility Meters
Applicable Industries
- Buildings
- Equipment & Machinery
Applicable Functions
- Product Research & Development
- Quality Assurance
Use Cases
- Mesh Networks
- Visual Quality Detection
Services
- Testing & Certification
About The Customer
Duco is a part of the Technip Group and is a significant player in the subsea engineering design, manufacturing, and testing industry. Duco's engineers are tasked with developing equipment capable of withstanding the extreme pressure and temperature conditions of hydrocarbon fields at water depths beyond 3,000 meters. The company primarily focuses on designing subsea 'umbilicals' that connect the topside platform or vessel and equipment installed on the seabed, including pumping stations with electricity and hydraulic pressure.
The Challenge
Duco, a major subsea engineering design, manufacturing, and testing facility, faced significant challenges in improving their Computer-Aided Engineering (CAE) model generation and analysis procedures for their bespoke products. These products, known as subsea 'umbilicals', are complex structures designed to withstand extreme pressure, temperature conditions, and adverse weather in hydrocarbon fields at water depths beyond 3,000 meters. The umbilicals connect the topside platform or vessel with seabed equipment, including pumping stations with electricity and hydraulic pressure. Duco's challenge was to speed up the analysis time for these structures, which had to endure demanding fatigue load cases. They were also experiencing issues with mesh quality with their incumbent pre-processor, prompting the need for a change.
The Solution
Duco chose HyperMesh, a pre-processor from HyperWorks, as their mesh generation tool to address their challenges. HyperMesh allowed Duco to significantly improve their models by providing direct control of the mesh output and enabling continuous mesh quality checks to ensure consistency throughout the model. The tool proved faster than Duco's incumbent tool in model generation and allowed the use of model symmetry. This meant that only a section of the umbilical required manual meshing, which could then be propagated across the entire model. Custom scripts even facilitated automatic meshing and extrusion of the spiraling internal cabling. Furthermore, HyperWorks' commitment to an open architecture ensured that the output files were fully compatible with Duco's existing solver codes.
Operational Impact
Quantitative Benefit
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