December 2024, Vol. 251, No. 12
Features
CAD-Based Tool Essential in Preventing Pipeline Failures
By Tom Schwarzweller, Account Executive, Microsol Resources
(P&GJ) — Pipelines play an integral part in modern industry. They help transport essential resources like water, oil, and gas across vast distances, ensuring facilities stay functional and operational.
The consequences of pipeline failure include catastrophic economic and environmental damage. Computer-assisted design (CAD) allows engineers to simulate pipeline stress analysis, helping find and eliminate weaknesses well before breaking the first ground.
CAD is a mainstay in the construction industry and is widely used to design, plan, and execute various structures, including pipelines. Ensuring these conduits are robust enough to meet operational standards required by the ASME (American Society of Mechanical Engineers) B31 codes is essential.
CAD-based stress analysis software helps create detailed 3-D models of piping systems. These models let engineers simulate a variety of loading conditions and analyze stress distribution throughout the pipeline.
Some of the tools that help engineers bring simulated stress analysis testing to the next level include:
- Detailed and accurate 3-D models that represent the complex geometries involved in pipeline building. By simulating bends, joints, supports, and connections, engineers ensure precise and reliable stress analysis results.
- Automated load calculations allow teams to understand the impact of the real-world pressures and forces that will stress the pipeline, including the combination of different conditions or geographies.
- Finite Element Analysis (FEA) integrates within the CAD environment, helping identify stress concentration areas in striking visual detail.
- CAD-based tools also enable engineers to understand dynamic conditions and performance under operating scenarios.
Reducing Failures
CAD-based stress analysis tools enable engineers to take a more proactive approach to identifying potential pipeline failures. By simulating real-world conditions, engineers can ensure costly failures are significantly reduced. Here’s how CAD stress analysis works.
Early detection
- Bends, elbows, tees, and valve connections are traditional points of weakness under cyclic load. CAD tools help engineers identify these points.
- CAD-based software can also evaluate welding points and predict their impact on the overall integrity of the pipeline.
- Corrosion modeling can forecast how the piping system will perform over the long term.
Material selection
- CAD software can simulate how various materials will function under loading conditions.
- Stress distribution data can inform engineers about required material thickness required for each segment.
- Engineers can also simulate the performance of composite materials within piping systems and understand the benefits of innovative blends.
Support placement
- CAD analysis helps teams understand the optimal type, spacing, and location of pipeline supports.
- Advanced CAD tools can predict how soil types will affect pipeline stability.
- Interestingly, these systems can also simulate how earthquakes or seismic loads will impact the pipeline.
Predictive maintenance
- CAD tools can predict material fatigue and help teams schedule maintenance and replacement before it’s too late.
- Engineers can also use these tools for existing pipelines to assess their remaining lifetimes and advise on present-day interventions.
- The oil and gas industry has built digital twins of pipelines that allow for real-time monitoring and assessment of these conduits.
CAD-based stress evaluation allows pipeline operators to switch from a reaction to a proactive maintenance approach, saving time and averting failures.
CAD systems offer a blend of tools and analytics built to ensure pipeline integrity. Here are some of the key advantages of these high-tech solutions.
Highly accurate 3D models capture the complexity of piping systems, leading to more precise and reliable stress analysis results. What’s more, by automating load applications, engineers get comprehensive data on internal and external pressure, wind loads, and temperature gradients.
Automating stress analysis saves a huge amount of time, allowing engineers to focus on optimizing designs and solving other important issues. These tools also open the door to parametric modeling, allowing engineers to quickly explore how different materials will handle stress loads. Finally, these software solutions easily integrate with a range of design and engineering tools, streamlining workflows and reducing the prospect of data transmission errors.
CAD tools help teams build informative color maps representing stress levels across the pipeline. These visualizations are ideal for complex projects and stakeholder communications. Similarly, dynamic simulations, animations, and reporting tools provide accessible insights into the pipeline-building process, ensuring proactive design modifications.
As the costs of construction continue to grow, any tool that drives cost-effectiveness will soon pay for itself. CAD-based stress analysis systems save money by preventing costly failures, repairs, and downtime. Additionally, they enable engineers to understand which materials are required for optimal performance and potentially identify lower-cost or sustainable options.
Finally, the best CAD tools reduce reliance on time-consuming and costly prototypes, cutting down on the design process.
Overall, using CAD tools for stress analysis ensures safer, more reliable and cost-effective pipeline design.
Integrating CAD
The benefits of CAD-based stress analysis software are obvious. However, unleashing their full power involves integrating these tools across the entire pipeline design workflow. This process ensures that the stress analysis insights help inform the entire construction life cycle.
Here is how CAD-driven stress analysis works across different design and construction phases.
CAD stress analysis should begin during the conceptual design phase to help identify problems early and promote data-driven decision-making.
Stress analysis must be present across the entire lifecycle, with stress distribution fed into the systems as designs change or evolve. CAD systems allow engineers to dynamically adjust designs based on new data, such as changing pipe thickness or diameters, adjusting support locations, or rerouting to avoid stress concentrations.
CAD systems offer enhanced cooperation between various disciplines and stakeholders. Data exchange platforms ensure everyone is working off the latest information while ensuring each team understands how stress analysis will impact the project.
Once construction begins, you can use the results of physical testing to confirm just how accurate the simulations proved to be. In the best situations, this can lead to an “as built” model that improves future analyses and maintenance planning.
Author: Tom Schwarzweller is an account executive for Microsol Resources for upper-New York state and Michigan. He has a background in CAD and BIM software to the architectural, engineering, and construction industry. Schwarzweller has worked with many of the early adopters of building information modeling (BIM).
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