Science & Technology

IIT Madras develops Indigenous Management System for ONGC to extend life of Offshore Oil Platforms

:- ‘Structural Integrity Management System’ (SIMS) was launched at IIT Madras by ONGC, which will implement this Database Management System for offshore assets and offshore engineering services

 

Chennai: Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IIT Madras) has developed an indigenous lifecycle management system for Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) to reduce the cost of maintenance and rehabilitation of offshore oil platforms.

Called the ‘Structural Integrity Management System’ (SIMS), it was developed by Offshore Structures Group from Department of Ocean Engineering, IIT Madras. It has a large database management system, housing crucial information about structural and other design related data, which can be extracted by a click of a button, saving considerable time and effort for ONGC.

Prof. V. Kamakoti, Director, IIT Madras, handed over the SIMS system to Shri Pankaj Kumar, Director (Offshore), ONGC, during an event on IIT Madras campus on July 14, 2022 in the presence of Prof. S. Nalllayarasu, Head, Department of Ocean Engineering, IIT Madras, who headed the Research Team that developed SIMS, ONGC Officials and other IIT Madras Researchers and faculty.

Shri. Pankaj Kumar launched the SIMS System, which will be implemented in ONGC with access to various stakeholders like Institute of Engineering and Ocean Technology (IEOT), offshore Assets, Offshore Engineering Services and Inspection and maintenance and repair teams of ONGC.

The ‘Structural Integrity Management’ is the implementation of engineering, inspection, maintenance, monitoring and remediation activities required to demonstrate the fitness-for-service of a structure for its intended application throughout its total service life and prevent/mitigate severe or catastrophic health, safety, environmental, or structural events.

The SIM process provides a proactive approach to monitor, evaluate and assess structural condition and establish a procedure to validate the fitness-for- service of an offshore structure.

Congratulating the Ocean Engineering Department Researchers and ONGC on development of this system, Prof. V. Kamakoti, Director, IIT Madras, said, “The Structural Integrity Management System is a very important system. Along with the oil that ONGC is drilling, it is also drilling data, which is extremely important. Real-time sensors can enable inspection every second, instead of periodical frequencies. We can also develop AI and ML Tools to predict when inspections would be required.”

The SIMS is a multi-parameter optimization and decision-making system for reducing life cycle costs of inspection and maintenance. ONGC spends a lot of effort and time in underwater inspection and repair and rehabilitation of these aged assets as these were constructed in 1980s and 1990s. A systematic approach is required to decide the timelines based on risk associated with the system.

The major risk associated with offshore platforms is joint crack due to fatigue and corrosion. This system gives solution to the determining the frequency of health checks and related risks using inspection data, structure characteristics, information obtained from survey, among others, and decision is made and recommended.

Speaking about this system, Prof. S. Nallayarasu, Head, Department of Ocean Engineering, IIT Madras, who headed the Research Team that developed SIMS, said, “SIMS process provides a proactive approach to monitor, evaluate and assess structural condition and establish a procedure to validate the fitness-for- service of an offshore structure. it includes development of database management system for more than 330 platforms, development of Reliability Analysis Scheme for fatigue life of tubular joints and development of a Risk-Based Underwater Inspection Methodology (RBUI).”

It is of paramount importance to ascertain the structural adequacy of offshore platforms to ensure their extended usage. During their life span, these platforms have undergone many structural modifications like addition of clamp-on conductors, additional flow lines/risers, and deck extensions, among others, along with more stringent codal revisions resulting in upward change in hydrodynamic loading on them. As per recent revision in API code, Structural Integrity Management System is mandatory for managing existing offshore structures.

The Exploration and Production (E&P) industry is a technology intensive sector and ONGC has always been eager for development and adoption of IIT Madras has been a front runner in the domain of indigenous technology development and has been providing various high tech. solutions as per the requirement of the industrial set up.

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