Loughborough University
Leicestershire, UK
LE11 3TU
+44 (0)1509 263171

Advanced VR Research Centre

Sustaining Complex Systems' Reliability

Overview

Maintenance of complex engineering production system such as oil and gas production systems has been a major challenge in the sector. The search for optimal solution to this chronic challenge led to the deployment of modern and innovative technology and creative processes in the systems, which are intended to enhance the safety of the operations, increase productivity, reduce associated risks to the lowest level possible, sustain systems’ designed reliability, and as a result increase productivity and return on investments.

Maintenance of complex engineering facilities is increasingly difficult due to:

1. Interactions among interdependent components and subsystems
2. Traditional maintenance strategies are incapacitated due to emergent behaviours of the system.
3. Process and control systems dynamics are nonlinear and multidimensional
4. Faults are novel and migratory as a result of interacting nature of the system
5. High risk associated with system, operations and processes
6. Environmental complexity.

The research is addressing challenges being faced in Nigeria where interruption of oil and gas production would have a serious effect on teh economy and environment.

Technical Approach

This research is focusing on developing creative and resilient maintenance systems that are capable of handling various interaction and undesirable emergent behaviours of the complex oil and gas production systems. Figure 1 shows a tiny snapshot of the complex infrastructure involved. Please note due to security reasons we cannot show the actual plant involved.


Effective management of plant engineering informatics will be deployed to develop predictive condition-based maintenance system that can sustain production systems’ reliability and productivity.

 

Figure 1: Massive infrastructure involving thousands of sensors and actuators operating in extremely hostile and hazardous environments

‌Effective management of plant engineering informatics is envisaged as the best approach to sustaining complex system’s reliability and productivity. Its benefits include:

• Effective utilization of Plant engineering informatics
• Incipient fault identification
• Fault impact estimation
• Isolation of faulty components
• Prediction of the remaining useful life of the system.

At the heart of this research is teh development of novel virtual engineering techniques that incorporate advanced modelling, simulation and visualization alng with engineering informatics.

 Results

This is  a new project and results wil be published in due course.‌

 

 

Want to know more?

Contact r.s.kalawsky@lboro.ac.uk, +44 (0)1509 63 5678 or j.e.eyoh@lboro.ac.uk