Integrating Computational Fluid Dynamics and Multibody Model
of an Oil Production Adapter Base for Disconnection Analysis
School of Engineering of São Carlos - University of São Paulo - Brazil
ABSTRACT
A methodology of Computation Fluid Dynamic
(CFD) and Multibody System (MBS) integration was
introduced to analyze a Production Adapter Base (PAB)
disconnection. Steady state CFD analyzes in different PAB
positions were done to get preliminary data considering
both fluid and mechanical dynamic as uncoupled. Then the
mechanical dynamics of PAB was investigated using a
multibody model and the steady state CFD results. Finally
a CFD analysis with moving mesh and mesh element
addition was done to simulate the coupling of both
dynamics and to validate the methodology.
INTRODUCTION
Production adapter base (PAB) is a sub sea
structure used in offshore platforms to extract the oil using
a high pressure natural gas injection into the well. The
PAB is attached to the wellhead through a dog house lock
system, which is a very confident component. Even though
the probability of fail of this component is remote, its
occurrence could be very dangerous for the sea
environment due to the possibility of PAB disconnection
and consequent oil leakage, what justifies this analysis.
In order to understand the dynamics of this
structure when the lock system fails computational fluid
dynamic (CFD) analyzes of the natural gas leakage inside
the chamber were run and a multibody model (MBS) of the
whole system were built. Four software were used to
perform these analyzes: Star-Design, Star-CCM+ and Star-
CD from CD-Adapco and MSC.Adams from
MSC.Software. The methodology used to integrate both
kinds of simulation considered first the fluid and
mechanical phenomenon as uncoupled, then studied them
separately and finally verified the coupling influences
through a complete CFD transient analysis using mesh
element addition to simulate the PAB movement.
Gerson Brand
Graduate Student – Department of Mechanical Engineering
Marcelo Prado / John Hough
MSC Brasil Software e Engenharia Ltda.
Cesar Lima
Petróleo Brasileiro S.A. - Petrobrás
Figure 1: Representation of the disconnection region to be analyzed.
According to Anderson (1995), computational
fluid dynamics constitutes a new “third approach” in
philosophical study and development of whole discipline
of fluid dynamics. In the seventeenth century, the
foundations for experimental fluid dynamics were laid in
France and England. The eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries saw the gradual development of theoretical fluid
dynamics, again primarily in Europe.
As a result, throughout most of the twentieth
century the study and practice of fluid dynamics involved
the use of pure theory on the one hand and pure experiment
on the other hand.
However, the advent of high-speed digital
computer combined with the development of accurate
numerical algorithms for solving physical problems on
these computers has revolutionized the way we study and
practice fluid dynamics today.
Anderson affirms that computational fluid
dynamics is today an equal partner with pure theory and
pure experiment in the analysis and solution of fluid
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dynamics problems. However, computational fluid
dynamics provides nothing more than just a third new
approach. It nicely and synergistically complements the
other two approaches of pure theory and pure experiment,
but it will never replace either of these ones.
Figure 2: The “three dimensions” of fluid dynamics.
According to Ferziger and Perić (2002), in some
cases experimental studies are very difficult if not
impossible. For example, the measuring equipment might
disturb the flow or the flow may be inaccessible. Some
quantities are simply not measurable with present
techniques or can be measured only with an insufficient
accuracy.
Experiments are an efficient means of measuring
global parameters, like drag, lift, pressure drop or heat
transfer coefficients. In many cases, however, it may be
essential to know whether flow separation occurs, whether
the wall temperature exceeds some limit or whether
compressible effects have considerable influences on the
system.
These advantages of CFD, however, are
conditional on being able to solve the Navier-Stokes
equations accurately, which is extremely difficult for most
flows of engineering interest. Accurate numerical solutions
for high Reynolds number flow are particularly difficult.
According to Ferziger and Perić if we are unable
to obtain accurate solutions for all flows, we have to
determine what we can produce and learn to analyze and
judge the results. First of all, we have to bear in mind that
numerical results are always approximate. The reason for
differences between computed results and “reality” is that
errors arise from each part of the processes used to
produce numerical solutions. Some examples are:
• The differential equations may
approximations or idealizations;
• Approximations are made in the discretization
process;
• Turbulence phenomenon require a very fine space
and time discretization to the calculation, which
makes necessary the use of assumptions or
idealizations to the modeling;
• In solving the discretized equations, iterative
methods are used. Unless they are run for a very
long time, the exact solution of the discretized
equations is not produced.
The application of CFD as a tool for the study of
the PAB disconnection phenomenon was choose because
of the great difficulties to simulate its operational
conditions in an experimental research.
How the main objective of the analysis was
verifying the possibility of a complete disconnection of the
PAB in case of a fail in the dog house lock, it was found
that CFD would give sufficient accurate results, even with
all limitations imposed by assumptions and simplifications,
to analyze and judge which configurations of water depth
and internal gas pressure would be favorable to the
occurrence of the complete disconnection.
METHODOLOGY
An initial analysis of the phenomenon conditions
leads us to make assumptions about the interaction
between the fluid flow and the mechanical dynamics. The
main characteristic is that the pressure difference between
the gas inside the chamber and the external ambient is very
high, while the inertial properties of the PAB are also very
high.
From this characteristic, some estimation was
made and it was found that the fluid dynamics is much
faster than the mechanical dynamics. It means that the fluid
flow stabilize after a change in the volume of control much
faster than a significant displacement of the PAB can
occur.
The assumption of the possibility of studying both
phenomenon uncoupled lead us to the follow approach: a
series of steady state CFD analysis were done at different
PAB positions and to different internal pressure of the gas,
covering all the configurations possible.
Some hypothesis and simplifications were studied
before the effective start of the steady state simulations.
The first one was the evaluation of the influence
of the gas injection through the system. This gas injection
keeps the pressure high inside the chamber during the oil
exploration. However, it was found that the mass flow
being injected in the system is much lesser than the leakage
mass flow when the lock fails. Then, this gas injection was
not considered in the simulations and this hypothesis
contain provided a great reduction in the number of steady state
CFD analysis required to cover all configurations.
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 The second hypothesis was the consideration of
the control volume as symmetric along the revolution axis.
It was found little three-dimensional variations along this
axis, however some simulations comparing both three-
dimensional and symmetric results showed variations
lesser than 1% in the parameters of interest. The adoption
of this hypothesis had great impact in the number of
elements of the model, simplifying a 600000 model
elements to a 30000 model.
The last hypothesis was the consideration of a
single-phase fluid system. It means that the parameters of
interest, force acting at PAB and gas mass flow due the
leakage, do not have significant changes when considering
both phases (sea water and natural gas) or just considering
gas phase. The comparison between both cases were run
and it was found variations lesser than 3% in the
parameters measured. For the multi-phase case evaluation
it was used Volume of Fluid methodology (VOF) to solve
the free surface problem. The adoption of this
simplification reduced the computational efforts, mainly
because of the finer time discretization required by the
simulation of free surface.
After these considerations, the methodology
chosen for the first part of the analyzes was running a
series of axisymmetric steady state CFD simulations
considering the PAB at different positions to different
internal gas pressure.
The software Star-Design was used to the mesh
generation. The geometry has been prepared to be a slice
part with little thickness of the three-dimensional volume
of control, as shown in Figure A-1 in appendix A. The
mesh element type chosen was the polyhedral because of
its properties of faster solution using less memory and
great accuracy.
Star-CCM+ was used as the pre-processor, solver
and post-processor for the steady state analyzes. The mesh
was imported from Star-Design and was converted to a
two-dimensional mesh. The boundary regions were set as
shown in Figure A-2. The boundary types were set
according to Table 1.
Boundary Name Bounday Type
Leakage_Inlet Stagnation Inlet
Housing No-Slip Wall
Line No-Slip Wall
Conector No-Slip Wall
Outlet Pressure
Table 1: Description of the boundary types.
According to Star-CD User Guide (2004), a
stagnation boundary is typically used on a boundary lying
in a large reservoir where the fluid properties are not
significantly affected by flow conditions in the solution
domain. It normally appears in compressible flow
calculations. This was the exactly definition of the
Leakage_Inlet boundary and that is way stagnation inlet
was used.
According to the same reference, pressure
boundary specifies a constant static pressure or
piezometric pressure on a given boundary. This is the
definition of the outlet boundary, which represent a
constant pressure due the sea depth.
Due convergences problems to the steady state
analyzes, in some configurations it had been used a
transient approach until the fluid system found the
equilibrium, which usually took less than 0.1s.
Some visualizations of the fluid flow at these
analyzes are shown in Figures A-3 and A-4.
The force acting on the connector, which is
directly linked to the PAB, and the mass flow leaking from
inside the chamber were monitored for each configuration.
Over 200 configurations were analyzed and the
results were plotted on three-dimensional graphs, as shown
in the examples in Figures A-5 and A-6. This surface data
plotted represent the response of the monitored parameters
to all the possible conditions to occur in the system
studied.
From this data, the multibody model calculated
the mechanical dynamic of the PAB. The Figure 3 shows
the interactive process of the calculation.
Figure 3: Interactive process of PAB dynamic calculation.
At each time step, the multibody model read the
information from CFD data matrix according to state of the
system, which means instant internal pressure and PAB
position, and calculates the new state for the next time
step. The multibody model is shown in Figure A-7.
A similar methodology can be seen in Ruiz et al
(2002), in which the aerodynamics forces for a vehicle
were found using steady state CFD analyzes and the
calculation of the influence of these forces on the vehicle
dynamics was calculated by the MBS model using the
same integration procedure suggested here.
As it was commented previously, this procedure is
based on the consideration that both the fluid dynamics
and the mechanical dynamics are uncoupled. To validate
this methodology, it was necessary a transient CFD
analysis using mesh motion to simulate the variations on
the volume of control and to compare the results.
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 How the total displacement of the PAB was about CONCLUSIONS
0.7m, which was very big comparing to the elements size,
This paper presented an approach for solving a
the use of cell-layer addition was necessary to maintain a
fluid-structure interaction with great displacement to
coherent mesh during all simulation. Star-CD was the
analyze the possibility of complete disconnection of oil
software used for this analysis.
Production Adapter Base (PAB) in case of fail of the main
According to the Star-CD User Guide (2004), a lock. The methodology used considered both fluid and
cell is removed by collapsing intervening faces between mechanical dynamics uncoupled and an integration of a
two opposite sides in a given direction. This is done by series of steady state CFD data and a multibody model was
moving together the vertices making up the faces. established. The methodology was validated by a transient
CFD analysis with moving mesh and cell layer addition to
The procedure chosen for this analysis was to
simulate the coupling between both phenomenons.
build the model with all the cells, which represent the PAB
in the highest position, and divide the region where the cell
addition would be in cell layers with different cell type ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
each.
Part of the work related to the transient CFD
After this procedure and after the setup of the analysis with mesh element addition was supported by
simulation and the boundaries conditions, events were set Gerald Schmidt and John Rogers from CD-Adapco USA.
up to remove all the cell layers in a negative time and to The comments of the referees are gratefully
start the cell addition at time zero, simulating the acknowledgments.
disconnection of the PAB. The Figure A-9 shows the
model in Star-CD and the colored region represents the
REFERENCES
cell layers to be removed/added.
1 – Anderson Jr., John D., Computational Fluid Dynamic
Due the movement of the mesh, the connections
The Basis with Application, McGraw-Hill, Inc., New
between the moving mesh region and the stationary mesh
York, USA, 1995.
region changes all the time during the simulation. A sliding
interface was set between these regions and then there 2 – Ferziger, J. H., Perić, M., Computational Methods for
were no restriction about the relative vertices position of Fluid Dynamics, Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
each region. New York, 2002.
The velocity of disconnection was set 1m/s, which 3 – Ruiz, S., Català, A., Punset, A., Arbiol, J., Marí, R.,
corresponded to the highest velocity obtained in MBS Multi Body System – Computational Fluid Dynamics
analyzes. The highest velocity favors the coupling of fluid (CFD) integration, 1st MSC.ADAMS European User´s
and mechanical dynamic and so this was the most critical Conference, London, 2002.
situation against the methodology chosen. 4 – Star-CD Version 3.24 User Guide, CD-Adapco Group,
The parameters monitored were the same of the 2004.
steady state analyzes and they were plotted as a function of 5 – Star-CD Version 3.24 Methodology, CD-Adapco
the PAB position. The comparison between the results Group, 2004.
obtained in the multibody model using the steady state
CFD data and CFD transient analysis with moving mesh is
shown in Figure A-10 and A-11.
The highest difference of the results of force
acting on PAB and gas mass flow for both methodologies
was respectively 1.05% and 7.87%. One important
characteristic of this comparison is that the force obtained
in this validation analysis was lesser and gas mass flow
was higher, which means that the variation favors the
security.
Considering that the evaluated situation is the
most critical condition, this variation is acceptable to
validate the steady state approach to analyze and judge
which conditions of water depth and gas internal pressure
would be favorable to the occurrence of complete
disconnection of the PAB in case of fail in the dog house
lock.

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Appendix A – List of Pictures

Figure A-3: Transonic gas flow visualization – Star-CCM+.

Figure A-1: Mesh generation at Star-Design.

Figure A-4: Absolute Pressure plot – Star-CCM+.

Figure A-2: Boundary regions used in the model.

Figure A-5: Force acting on PAB as a function of pressure difference

and PAB position.

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Figure A-6: Mass flow as a function of pressure difference and PAB
position.

Figure A-9: Representation of the sliding interface.

Figure A-7: Multibody model at MSC.Adams.

Figure A-10: Comparison of the force acting on PAB data between both
methodologies.

Figure A-11: Comparison of the gas mass flow data between both
Figure A-8: CFD model at Star-CD. methodologies.