Integrity Monitoring of Flexible Structures

25 January 2012 North of England Branch evening meeting

Chairman Dr Jerry Baker, Chief Engineer, Head of Life Cycle Management, Atkins Solutions

Flyer

Overview

Oil and gas fields located in challenging environments have pushed the development of risers technologies and a number of technical challenges need to be evaluated at all stages. Assessing the integrity of subsea risers in operation is now becoming a necessity in order to improve safety, reliability and performance.

Presentations

Integrity Management of Flexible Pipe

Patrick Le Stanc, Department Manager, Technip Riser Integrity Management

Events detection and the follow up of service life parameters are presenting a huge interest for operators by allowing them to anticipate any adverse effect on the offshore and subsea facilities in order to maximise the safe service life. If necessary, appropriate action plan can then be scheduled in advance for maintaining the safe operation of the riser system. In order to implement such Integrity Management plans, qualification of monitoring or inspection systems must be anticipated together with the associated interpretation services. Various technologies can be used to support this approach (distributed measurements based on optical fibres, acoustic emission…). The presentation outlined some of the various technologies qualified and under development to support this approach.

Integrity Monitoring Systems

Dr Geoff Lyons, Director Systems Structures & Risers, BPP-TECH

This presentation provided an overview of BPP-TECH’s comprehensive experience in the field of integrity management of flexible structures and provide an insight into various new developments in integrity monitoring. In particular the presentation focused upon:

• Moorings (POSMON, CHAMON, OSCAR)
• Tensioned Risers (RMS)
• Flexible Risers (DRIFT)
• Umbilicals (FUMS)
• Pipelines (Fibre Optics)