RUM2021 RUM2021-NAM Abaqus CustomerPresentation
Despite the up and downs of the market in the oil and gas industry, our engineering simulation capacity at Halliburton Completion Tools Product Service Line has been steadily growing over the past 18 years, in every aspect, from headcount to the number of Abaqus licenses, to the number of cores on our cluster computer. This is in sharp contrast to other computational modeling organizations in other companies or other divisions at Halliburton.
Our remarkable success is rooted in our core belief that the goal of Engineering Simulation is to help to solve challenging engineering problems timely.
How do we implement this core belief/strategy in our executions?
That was the topic of my plenary keynote presentation at the 2019 3DEXPERIENCE Modeling & Simulation Conference, Novi, MI, September 18-19, 2019, titled “On Formulations and Applications of Computational Modeling to Product Development”. I will extend my discussion on this topic at the 2021 North America Regional User Meeting on May 18, 2021, through my customer keynote presentation, “Engineering Simulation Driven Product Development and Innovation”.
Here is a brief recap of the presentation “On Formulations and Applications of Computational Modeling to Product Development”.
Engineering simulations promise faster turnaround, lower cost in product development, and solving engineering problems in general. We need to deliver on this promise.
The rapid advances in high-performance computing hardware and commercial engineering simulation software enable the analysis of extremely large numerical models in a reasonable amount of time. A side effect of this advancement is that more and more brute force very large models are created to analyze engineering problems, higher demand on computing power, and longer analysis time.
It is imperative to formulate physics-based models properly, through proper idealization and approximation, and as simple as possible. Applying engineering insight into model setup can help to gain an understanding of the underlying mechanics as well as to deliver solutions efficiently and effectively, not just to provide numbers.
Here is one of the case studies discussed in the 2019 presentation for illustration on how to formulate a simple model for very complex engineering problems. This case study deals with the dynamics of a nearly 20,000-foot-long tool string in an oil well. Instead of a high-fidelity coupled fluid-structure interaction analysis, with proper idealization and approximations, we applied Abaqus Aqua ingeniously to solve this problem and provided insights and an operation envelop to our field engineers and customers. (see References for details: 1) Zhong, A., and Gano, J. (2008), Dynamic Response in a Pipe String during Drop-Catch in a Wellbore, 2008 ABAQUS USERS’ Conference, Newport, Rhode Island, May 19-22, 2008; 2) Zhong, A., and Felten, F. (2012), Dynamics of a Completion String in a Fluid Filled Wellbore, 2012 Simulia Community Conference, Providence, Rhode Island, May 15-17, 2012)
In the upcoming 2021 NAM RUM customer keynote presentation (May 18th, 1:35 pm) I will continue the discussion from 2019, with a focus on how to effectively apply engineering simulations to solve challenging engineering problems, drive innovation, and make a commercial impact.
We classify applications of our engineering simulation capabilities through a pyramid of computational modeling applications, which consists of three interrelated levels: 1) Evaluation, 2) Improvement and Optimization, and 3) Knowledge quantification and innovation. In this talk, an overview of our capabilities will be presented with a few case studies to demonstrate how engineering simulation helps to drive robust engineering mechanics-based designs to achieve improvement and optimization, to resolve field operation issues while reducing product development time and cost, and to stimulate innovation.
I look forward to presenting on May 18 at the North Americas RUM. Please feel free to comment here or raise your questions during the conference.
