Model-Based Health Monitoring of Annular Blowout Preventers

Abstract

Summary Presented here is an adaptive model–based approach for the real–time condition and health monitoring of annular blowout–preventer (BOP) functions. The proposed approach fuses a first–principles model with in–field data by adapting the model coefficients to match the data. These adapted coefficients are directly interpreted as the annular preventer health indicators. The performance of the proposed adaptive model was evaluated using an annular–BOP digital twin (i.e., Virtual Annular Preventer) implemented in a simulation environment. The model was then adapted using data collected from six different offshore rigs. The resultant model coefficients indicated that the proposed methodology might detect degradation of annular preventers and, hence, provide drillers and subsea engineers with real–time information about the health of the annular–BOP function.