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Tuesday, 14 August 2012

Congratulations to Bassem Youssef who recently received the Australian Gas Innovation Award Commendation.  He was recognised for his unique pipeline on-bottom stability simulation program, developed as part of his PhD study.

This provides pipeline engineers with a reliable and accurate pipeline design tool capable of a 3D simulation of offshore pipelines under the action of wave and current loading.

Launched to recognise the innovators driving Australia's fast growing liquefied natural gas (LNG) industry, the Australian Gas Innovation Awards were presented at the Australian Gas Technology Awards Dinner on the 26th July 2012. The awards are an opportunity to profile and acknowledge people and companies with a commitment to fostering change within the Australian gas industry. The finalists were judged on a number of criteria, assessing the originality, impact and practicality of the innovation.

Bassem completed his PhD at COFS in May 2012 and is now working at a local engineering consulting firm.

The program is a combination of three individual programs to perform an integrated pipeline simulation.  A hydrodynamic modelling program that generates 3D ocean surface estimates the wave kinematics at the pipeline level and calculates the hydrodynamic loads on the pipeline and was coded in a FORTRAN named UWAHYDRO.  Pipe-soil interaction is modelled using plasticity theory, again coded in a FORTRAN program named UWAPIPE.  The program was developed by integrating UWAHYDRO and UWAPIPE with the commercial finite element program ABAQUS.

The program has the ability to account for the coupling effect between the hydrodynamic model and the pipe-soil interaction model and update the hydrodynamic load during the simulation based on the pipe movements.  These functions have proved to achieve accurate and realistic pipeline simulation which in turn reduces the costs associated with unnecessary secondary stabilizers.

Sets of retrospective simulations of pipeline case studies and pipe-model centrifuge tests were carried out and proved the accuracy of the developed program in performing complex pipeline simulations.

The developed program provides the pipeline design engineers with a reliable and easy-to-use pipeline simulation tool.  Using the developed pipeline program in the pipeline on-bottom stability simulations will achieve more realistic, accurate and economic pipeline design.

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Centre for Offshore Foundation Systems