Tuning of Thermal FEA Using Krylov Parametric MOR for Subsea Application

A dead leg is a typical subsea production system component. CFD is required to model heat transfer within the dead leg. Unfortunately its solution is time demanding and thus not suitable for fast prediction or repeated simulations. Therefore there is a need to create a thermal FEA model, mimicking the heat flows and temperatures seen in CFD cool down simulations. This paper describes the conventional way of tuning and a new automated way using parametric model order reduction (PMOR) together with an optimization algorithm. The tuned FE analyses replicate the steady state CFD parameters within a maximum error in heat flow of 6 % and 3 % using manual and PMOR method respectively. During cool down, the relative error of the tuned FEA models with respect to temperature is below 5% comparing to the CFD. In addition, the PMOR method obtained the correct FEA setup five times faster than the manually tuned FEA.

Verification of a Locked CFD Approach to Cool Down Modeling

Increasing demand on the performance of Subsea Production Systems (SPS) suggests a need for more detailed investigation of fluid behavior taking place in subsea equipment. Complete CFD cool down analyses of subsea equipment are very time demanding. The objective of this paper is to investigate a Locked CFD approach, which enables significant reduction of the computational time and at the same time maintains sufficient accuracy during thermal cool down simulations. The result comparison of a dead leg simulation using the Full CFD and the three LCFD-methods confirms the validity of the locked flow field assumption for the selected case. For the tested case the LCFD simulation speed up by factor of 200 results in the absolute thermal error of 0.5 °C (3% relative error), speed up by factor of 10 keeps the LCFD results within 0.1 °C (0.5 % relative error) comparing to the Full CFD.

Krylov Model Order Reduction of a Thermal Subsea Model

A subsea hydrocarbon production system can undergo planned and unplanned shutdowns during the life of the field. The thermal FEA is used to simulate the cool down to verify the insulation design of the subsea equipment, but it is also used to derive an acceptable insulation design for the cold spots. The driving factors of subsea analyses require fast responding and accurate models of the equipment cool down. This paper presents cool down analysis carried out by a Krylov subspace reduction method, and compares this approach to the commonly used FEA solvers. The model considered represents a typical component of a subsea production system, a closed valve on a dead leg. The results from the Krylov reduction method exhibits the least error and requires the shortest computational time to reach the solution. These findings make the Krylov model order reduction method very suitable for the above mentioned subsea applications.