Bentley’s SACS now includes an integrated analysis and design solution for the complete lifecycle of offshore structures, including construction, transportation, in-place, and decommissioning
This new capability enables engineers to reduce heavy offshore structures into manageable pieces when removing them from complex working environments.This latest advancement in SACS reinforces Bentley’s commitment to adapt its offerings to meet the changing requirements of the offshore energy industry.
According to a recent report by IHS Markit, there has been a significant rise in the number of planned decommissioning projects, which is attributed to global economic conditions and assets in mature fields reaching their end of life. As decommissioning carries similar risks and challenges to marine construction, special consideration must be applied to the safety, environmental, economic, and social aspects of any project.
Phil Christensen, SVP, analytical modeling, at Bentley Systems, said, “When the price of oil dropped by more than 50 per cent, engineering companies in the oil and gas industry had to rapidly adapt to sustain their businesses. This disruption has created a very challenging market in which technology plays a key role in adjusting to the changed circumstances.”
The SACS decommissioning capabilities automate the process and allow engineers to determine optimal cutting plans to meet decommissioning project requirements, such as structure weight for lift and transport. Users fully control the structural weight through the change in elevation and can apply automatic cutting of the structure at user-defined elevations. Sum of forces for any elevation can be reviewed graphically or in tabular reports.
The new SACS release also includes improved interoperability with AutoPIPE, an enhanced GUI for joint meshing, and other key advancements including:
• Rectangular hollow section (RHS) joint design
• Full-iterative solution for P-Delta analysis
• Wind loading based on API 4F functionality
• SACS-FAST non-integrated interface for wind turbine analysis
• Enhanced collapse analysis
With integrated workflows spanning AutoPIPE and SACS, piping design for offshore structures can be completed in hours instead of weeks. Workflows to add pipe loads to offshore structures improve efficiency and provide accurate analysis results. Importing piping geometry from AutoPIPE into SACS enables the design of secondary steel and piping connection supports the primary offshore structure.
