© 2011 ANSYS, Inc. April 19, 20231

Rezoning Approach to Nonlinear Problems for Sub-Sea ApplicationsFasalu Rahman. B Mahesh Bhat

CHALLENGES

SIMULATION METHODOLOGY BENEFITS and /or VALIDATIONS

TECHNOLOGY USED

• In deep-sea oil fields subsea metal seals play an important role to facilitate a smooth operation during drilling and production by withstanding high internal pressure and temperature.

• The metal seal is installed into the wellhead using a running tool, and the entire process is a complex phenomenon involving high plastic strains.

• FEA proves to be an indispensable method in accurately understanding the seal installation process.

• In a finite large-deformation analysis, mesh distortion reduces simulation accuracy, causes convergence difficulties, and can eventually terminate an analysis.

• Rezoning allows repairing the distorted mesh and mapping all solved variables (node and element solutions) to the new mesh.

• Automation of the manual rezoning avoids manual intervention and expedites the process.

• Distortion issue was resolved and hence the seal installation process could be accurately captured.

• Considerable time was saved by avoiding to rerun the analyses and the APDL could be used to automate the rezoning process

• The FEA results matched very well with the test data.

ANSYS rezoning methodology used.

Rezoning process was automated to avoid manual intervention.