BIM-supported 4D acoustics simulation approach to mitigating noise impact on maintenance workers on offshore oil and gas platforms

Abstract

Abstract Maintenance workers on offshore platforms are usually exposed to a high level of noise from the working environment as most of the daily operations of oil and gas process machines generate noise over 85 dBA, causing substantial health and safety issues. Avoiding exposure of workers to the modules that generate high sound power during maintenance activities can significantly mitigate the noise impact on human health and safety. Noise simulation and noise mapping methodologies can be used to evaluate and quantify the noise impact on offshore platforms. However, limited digital information of offshore platforms makes noise simulation setup challenging as modules on topsides have a high level of details. In addition, current noise mapping studies are usually conducted in a 3D static manner, which only reflects noise impact at a certain time. Building information modeling (BIM) provides detailed physical and functional characteristics of a facility that can be applied to support the noise simulation on offshore platforms. In this study, attempts have been made to develop a BIM-supported 4D acoustics simulation approach to mitigating the noise impact on maintenance workers of offshore platforms. BIM is utilized to automatically provide required information to facilitate noise simulation setup. 4D acoustics simulation approach is used to obtain the spatio-temporary sound pressure level (SPL) distribution of the noise generated by the functional modules on offshore platforms. Acoustic diffusion equation (ADE) is selected as noise SPL prediction model. To evaluate noise impact on maintenance workers, an equation based on daily noise dose is then newly derived to quantify the noise impact. Optimization algorithm is used to determine the maintenance schedule with the minimum daily noise dose. Finally, optimized maintenance schedule that has considered noise impact is used to update the daily maintenance plan on offshore platforms. An example of a fixed offshore platform with maintenance daily activity information is used to illustrate the proposed BIM-supported 4D acoustics simulation approach. The results show that the developed approach can well mitigate noise impact on maintenance workers on offshore platforms, resulting in health and safety management improvement.