SIMULIA Ressourcen-Center

Umbilical systems provide power and control (electricity, hydraulic power, chemical injection) to subsea oil and gas equipment. Electrical cables and hydraulic tubes are arranged in helical bundles and placed in successive layers depending on the design. Installations into increasingly deeper water place greater demands upon the structural components in terms of strength. 3D finite element analysis is an applicable technique in which to assess the strain and stress distribution and the interactions between components in such complex structures. The true geometry is respected and most of the simplifications of usual approaches can be relieved.

Customer Papers

Numerical validation of a mico-macro material model for solid-solid martensitic phase transformation (PT) of multi-variant mono-crystals at finite strains with comparisons to linearized strains is presented, using reliable experimental data. The material and numerical models are based on work by Govindjee and Miehe (2001) and by Stein and Zwickert (2006) at linearized strains and extended to finite strains by Stein and Sagar (submitted 2006). In the above mentioned works, C1 -continuous thermo-mechanical micro-macro PT-theory using Bain’s principle is presented by a unified Lagrangian functional including phase evolution equations with mass conservation and quasi-convexification of energy wells.

Customer Papers

A common requirement in the oil and gas industry is to design structures that are adequate against the effects of accidental gas explosions. This paper presents an overview on the methodologies involved in the study of the response of structures to resist blast and explosion, focusing on the use of nonlinear finite element analysis (NLFEA). NLFEA can be used to overcome the limitations of commonly used analytical methods which are predominantly developed for elastic response or limited plastic response and do not allow for large deflection and unstable responses.

Customer Papers

Oilfield casings employ threaded connections which are designed to provide both structural and sealing integrity under installation and service loads. This paper presents a finite element methodology for analyzing casing connections subjected to non-axisymmetric loads. The analysis approach can be used for assessing connection structural integrity, sealability and fatigue life.

Customer Papers

Offshore wind energy plants promise to become an important source of energy in the near future. It is expected that within 10 years, wind parks with a total capacity of thousands of megawatts will be installed in European seas. The foundation of such offshore wind energy plants plays an important role in the stability of these structures. High demands have to be made concerning foundation design and construction methods to find economical and technically optimal solutions. Two foundation concepts which can be used in this field are the monopile and the tripod.

Customer Papers

Thread connections are widely used in oil and gas industry. Determination of burst and collapse response of threads under critical pressure is important in a design process; however, a straight forward analysis of helical thread connections would require a huge model and long computing time. This paper will discuss other techniques that can determine the required information more efficiently.

Customer Papers

Production of glass bottles requires blowing of the glass after entrance of a gob of molten glass in the blank mould. The final shape of the bottle is highly dependent on the viscosity of the glass, the blow-pressure and the temperature distribution in the glass and the mould and simulation of this complicated process enables optimization of the process conditions. During simulation of blowing of the glass, the mesh has to be adapted due to the extreme deformations of the mesh. Using the existing ALE-technique for this kind of applications requires a lot of userintervention and trial-and-error to create a mesh that suits both the initial and final topology of the glass.

Customer Papers

The combined load condition that develops in a casing string during its installation in a directional or horizontal oil well needs to be considered in the structural integrity analysis routinely undertaken as part of the well completion design process. This paper presents a non-linear finite element analysis methodology, completed using ABAQUS 6.6, which simulates the installation of casing in directional/horizontal wells. The paper describes the development of the finite element model and demonstrates its use as an effective and reliable method for assessing casing structural integrity in the design of such well completions.

Customer Papers

The paper presents a numerical simulation of the drop test in a still water for the multi-component box structure. The complexity of the problem is in the strong fluid-structure interaction (FSI) between the box and the water free surface. The numerical simulation of the drop test is performed with two software tools: Abaqus and FlowVision through the direct coupling interface, which manipulates, on the Abaqus side the Lagrangian finite-element mesh and on the FlowVision side the Eulerian finite-volume mesh with sub grid geometry resolution.

Customer Papers

Solutions to challenging structural mechanics problems often rely on approaches that properly integrate theoretical analysis, experiments, and finite element simulation, along with judgment and practical approximations. Combining these elements is important not only for the original methods development of a given problem class, but also for repeated applications of such methods. This paper describes how multiple software solutions, namely Abaqus, Mathcad, and KornucopiaTM have been blended together to create robust approaches to address several challenging problems in nonlinear mechanics.

Customer Papers

Woven polymer- based composites are currently used in a wide range of naval applications. Use of composite materials in critical applications requires that dynamic material behavior be fully characterized. Composite material behavior is generally well understood in the linear regime, and can be predicted with sufficient confidence up to the point of first ply failure. However, the mechanical behavior beyond first ply failure is not characterized by a validated theory that can account for material nonlinearity, strain rate dependence, and progressive failure. The objective of this work is to develop and validate a progressive failure approach that can be used for woven fabric polymer-based composites subjected to dynamic loads.

Customer Papers

In order to reduce the time to market with maintained or improved quality, virtual testrigs is emerging as an important technology in the commercial vehicle industry. Development testing consists of forcing a system B (a physical or virtual test rig) to behave like system A (a vehicle on the test track). This is achieved by choosing the “best” input signals to system B in a process generally referred to as “drive signal iteration”. It is a classical inverse problem of a multivariable function where the key challenge is to get a good estimate of system transfer function. This paper describes how Abaqus may be used for this process.

Customer Papers