• Journal of Ocean Engineering and Technology
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• v.26 no.6
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• pp.86-92
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• 2012

An exploration well is drilled where oil or gas potential is shown by a seismic survey and interpretation. With the advance of drilling technology, most of the easily accessible oil had been developed by the end of the 20th century. To satisfy the ever increasing demand for oil, and bolstered by high oil prices, the major oil companies started to drill in deep water, which requires a deep offshore drilling unit. Offshore drilling units are generally classified by their maximum operating water depth. Many semi-submersible rigs have been purpose-designed for the drilling industry as the allowable drilling water depth has become deeper by the developed technics since the first semi-submersible was launched in 1963. Semi-submersible rigs are commonly used for shallow to deep water up to 3,000 m. Drilling equipment such as a top drive, blowout preventer, drawworks and power system, mud circulation system, and subsea wellhead system are explained to help with an understanding of offshore drilling procedures in the oil and gas fields. The objective of this paper is to introduce the main components of a semi-submersible rig and, by doing so, to raise the awareness of offshore drilling, which accounts for over 30% of the total oil production and will continue to increase.

• Special Issue of the Society of Naval Architects of Korea
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• 2015.09a
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• pp.69-73
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• 2015

An evaluation of the accidental limit state (ALS) for design of a semi-submersible drilling rig is one of the essential design requirements as well as ultimate limit state (ULS) and fatigue limit state (FLS). This paper describes the ALS evaluation on the explosion accident at shale shaker room of semi-submersible drilling rig. There are three steps for the ALS evaluation such as structural analysis at concept design, risk based safety design and structural analysis at detailed design. For the ALS evaluation at concept design, conceptual explosion overpressure from the Rule guided by the classification society was used in the structural analysis that was carried out using LS-DYNA. To set up the design accidental load (DAL), explosion analysis was carried out using FLACS taking safety barriers into consideration. Then, the structural analysis was carried out applying DAL for the ALS evaluation at detailed design. Through the ALS evaluation on the explosion at shale shaker room, the importance of the risk based safety design was described.

• Journal of the Society of Naval Architects of Korea
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• v.50 no.3
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• pp.129-137
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• 2013

Each owner or operator of offshore products uses a maintenance management system like CMMS(Computerized Maintenance Management System) in order to manage their assets effectively and efficiently for a long time. But most of maintenance management systems have been focused on machinery items, not on 'Hull' until now. On the other hand, classifications like ABS, DNV, GL are having a sale on hull inspection and maintenance system for ships and an interest in hull maintenance system is increasing because of the application of EDD(Extended Dry Docking). This paper discusses the concept, inspection process and the practical application of Hull maintenance for Semi-submersible drilling rig to extend the service life and run a stable operation.

• Special Issue of the Society of Naval Architects of Korea
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• 2017.10a
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• pp.105-108
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• 2017

Condensation is one of the common issues which we can easily see in everyday life. For example, the surface of glasses with cold water is easily moisturized. This wet surface gives us uncomfortable feeling and is sometimes dangerous because it is slippery. As the safety on working space is one of the most important issue on offshore project, condensation is also important matter to take care of with precaution. Since the bottom of vessel or offshore facility is submersed in the water, the risk of having condensate on the steel surface is getting higher because sea water temperature is normally lower than ambient temperature. And if there is any electric equipment or person working in that space, condensation is normally not allowed. The pontoon of semi-submersible drilling rig is such a space which is submersed, with electric and mechanical equipments and person working periodically. To prevent condensation in pontoon, study was conducted by checking several cases.

• Journal of Ship and Ocean Technology
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• v.11 no.3
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• pp.1-13
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• 2007

A semi-submersible drilling rig is regarded as one of the typical offshore structures operated in the field with moderate environments such as the Gulf of Mexico, Brazil, and West Africa. Its typical roll and pitch natural periods are around 30 seconds, which avoids prevailing regions of the wave energy spectrum, and their responses in waves are quite acceptable for common operation conditions. But large roll and pitch motions can be induced by wave difference frequency energy spectrum if the metacentric heights of a semi-submersible decrease to small values in some loading conditions, and it is because the roll and pitch natural periods increase and approach to the region where the spectral density of the low frequency wave drift moment has significant value. This paper describes the low frequency roll motion of a semi-submersible that are excited by the wave 2nd order difference frequency energy by a series of model experiments. From the model tests with several different initial metacentric heights (GM), it was observed that a semi-submersible can experience large roll motion due to the wave group spectrum.

• Proceedings of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute Conference
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• 1994.10a
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• pp.103-112
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• 1994

Various kinds of fatigue failures of ocean structures were reported and the importance of fatigue life estimation at the design state is significantly recognized and various kinds of analysis approaches have been discussed. In this paper characteristics of the simplified method proposed here and the spectral method are studied and the elements of the approach are discussed. The merits and demerits of the forementioned analysis schemes are studied and the relating parameters such as SCF and S-N curves are also investigated. The simplified fatigue analysis approach and tile spectral fatigue analysis technique is applied for the analysis of bracing members of typical semi-submersible drilling rig structure for the verification of the usage of two methods and the sensitivity study has been performed using the simplified method. The result from the spectral analysis give a more realistic picture of the fatigue life of the offshore structure considered here.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Fisheries and Ocean Technology
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• v.53 no.4
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• pp.413-422
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• 2017

The objective of this study was to prove possible effects of a habitable place for fish around semi-submersible drilling rig which measured underwater radiated noise, irradiance distribution of rig's light and conducted experimental fishing in Malaysia territory and observed for distribution of fishes around the rig by ROV during drilling operation in the East Sea of Korea. As a result underwater radiated noise was $130dB/{\mu}Pa$ from 156.25 to 187.50 Hz, irradiance distribution of light was between 21.5 and 43.1 lx. Despite this result, underwater radiated noise was not a threat to fish around rig and low irradiance distribution of light also played a role in the luring influence of the fishes at night. Fish showed up in the beginning of drilling operation and at the end of drilling operation. However, there are few fish in the midst of drilling operation. The main reason for this result was the destruction of the habitable place due to blow out mud and broken pieces of ground formation in drilling hole. The results are expected to contribute to reasonable fishery management around rig.

• Journal of Ocean Engineering and Technology
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• v.2 no.2
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• pp.27-36
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• 1988

For the purposes of drilling oil field and extracting oil deep water in more rough weather, the size of drilling rigs must be estimated. In this paper, the three dimensional source distribution method is used and we assume 10 deg. heeling and trimming condition of the drilling rig(SR-192). Also, the effects of the hydrodynamic forces which include the drift forces for field method, and the motion responses are studied with changing the incident wave direction in the assumed inclining condition. The theory and numerical codes used in this thesis appeared to be very useful for the preliminary design of drilling rigs.

• Journal of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute of Korea
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• v.26 no.4
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• pp.247-254
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• 2013

In this paper, dynamic response analysis of a heave compensation system is performed for offshore drilling operations based on multibody dynamics. With this simulation, the efficiency of the heave compensation system can be virtually confirmed before it is applied to drilling operations. The heave compensation system installed on a semi-submersible platform consists of a passive and an active heave compensator. The passive and active heave compensator are composed of several bodies that are connected to each other with various types of joints. Therefore, to carry out the dynamic response analysis, the dynamics kernel was developed based on mutibody dynamics. To construct the equations of motion of the multibody system and to determine the unknown accelerations and constraint forces, the recursive Newton-Euler formulation was adapted. Functions of the developed dynamics kernel were verified by comparing them with other commercial dynamics kernels. The hydrostatic force with nonlinear effects, the linearized hydrodynamic force, and the pneumatic and hydraulic control forces were considered as the external forces that act on the platform of the semi-submersible rig and the heave compensation system. The dynamic simulation of the heave compensation system of the semi-submersible rig, which is available for drilling operations with a 3,600m water depth, was carried out. From the results of the simulation, the efficiency of the heave compensation system were evaluated before they were applied to the offshore drilling operations. Moreover, the calculated constraint forces could serve as reference data for the design of the mechanical system.

• Journal of Advanced Marine Engineering and Technology
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• v.36 no.7
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• pp.942-947
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• 2012

As electricity has been used in ship's propulsion, it is necessary to increase the system voltage and current for the electrical distribution system. So it is required to improve the system safety and efficiency, the power stability, the efficiency of the generation through various analysis of ship's electric power system. In this paper, the electrical service reliability of the power distribution system of semi submersible drilling rigs has been analysed and discussed using ETAP.