Session: 07-09-01: Vibrations of Continuous Systems

Paper Number: 111695

111695 - Modeling and Simulation of Orbit Rising Stem Ball Valve System for Real-Time Health Monitoring and Condition-Based Maintenance 

Orbit valve system is a proven technology to control fluid flow in arduous process conditions, including high temperature, critical isolation to molecular sieve switching services. Its unique tilt-and-turn design reduces seal rubbing and delivers reliable performance. The reliable and continuous operation is critical for business. An unexpected valve failure can cause production loss a few thousand to a few million dollars a day. Traditionally, regular maintenance is scheduled to service the valve. However, many maintenances are conservative and significantly increase the operational costs. Condition based maintenance can optimize the maintenance operations of Orbit valves based on better understanding of their real time conditions during operation. This project is focusing on physics based modeling and simulation that provides such understanding.

Two types of models are used to help us understand and mimic the orbit valve system's real behavior. Finite Element Method (FEM) provides accurate results as it considers the detailed geometry, material properties, boundary conditions and nonlinear behavior in the orbit valve operation. System models fuses first principles and FEM results to reduce the amount of costly FEM simulations, provide acceptable accuracy and better adaptivity for condition based monitoring of orbit valve. Unknown and uncertain parameters such as friction factor are calibrated using lab and field test data. The calibrated system model serves as the baseline to investigate valve behavior under various conditions.

The combination of FEM and system model takes advantage of each method and avoids their drawbacks. The FEM provides high fidelity prediction in certain conditions and the system model enables model scalability to various valve sizes and model efficiency in simulating valve operation under different scenarios. The system model can be converted into FMU (Functional Mock-up Unit) to ensure better compatibility with condition based maintenance system.

A direct comparison between system model results and FEM results shows that their difference on extracted features such as translational friction force is less than 8%. The calibration on 10X8-600 orbit valve indicates the model accuracy is within predefined accuracy requirements. Further calibration on more orbit valve sizes is underway. The resulting system model will be used to establish a healthy baseline condition for each valve and it will be introduced to conduct what-if analyses to capture valve behavior under different degraded/failed conditions. The FEM and system models improve the understanding of Orbit valve system, which serves as a foundation of future real time health monitoring and condition based maintenance of valves.

Presenting Author: Yaou Wang SLB

Presenting Author Biography: The author obtained his doctorate degree in the department of Mechanical Engineering from the Ohio State University. After that, he worked in the automobile industry and then joined the oil and gas industry. Till now, he has accumulated more than ten years’ experience of computer aided design and analysis, and design and process optimization based on statistical methods. Currently, he is a Senior Modeling and Simulation Engineer at SLB, the world’s leading oilfield services provider. He is in charge of the drilling equipment design analysis and optimization, and new simulation method and automation procedure development.

Authors:

Yaou Wang SLB
Taoufik Wassar SLB
Shu Pan SLB
Jibin Shi SLB
Haitao Zhang SLB
Ke Li SLB