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Managing Installation Tolerances through System Modeling and Tolerance Budgeting
Author(s) -
Henanger Thomas,
Muller Gerrit,
Picacia Luca
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
incose international symposium
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 2334-5837
DOI - 10.1002/j.2334-5837.2016.00219.x
Subject(s) - subsea , interfacing , process (computing) , systems engineering , installation , context (archaeology) , computer science , engineering design process , engineering , reliability engineering , risk analysis (engineering) , construction engineering , mechanical engineering , marine engineering , medicine , paleontology , computer hardware , biology , operating system
Contractors in the oil and gas industry are facing challenges when installing subsea production systems (SPS) in deep waters. The installation relies on engineering of the systems with high accuracy levels and narrow clearances on the interfacing surfaces to meet required installation tolerances. To ensure that all installation tolerances requirements are met, there is a need for a systematic governing process of managing, controlling, and verifying them. Engineers define installation tolerances through qualification activities of components and technologies. Extensive systems and complex installation sequences generate tolerance chains affecting the interfacing components. The verification of the installation consequently requires a significant effort. The research focus is on how system modeling and tolerance budgeting would help the process of managing installation tolerances of a subsea production system in the context of preventing late verification, potential late design changes, and errors in installation. Use of system modeling made it possible to visualize the installation of the system of interest, and systematically structure relevant information. The visualization supported the researchers to develop an understanding of the tolerance chain for the system of interest. Based on the models, we were able to put together a tolerance budget calculating the theoretical worst‐case scenario of installation on a chosen critical misalignment. Our research showed that the systems engineering (SE) effort had a positive impact on the process, considering the cost of the effort relative to the potential cost of the preventable scenarios.