Session: 16-08-01 Numerical Wave Tank - Intelligent Systems, Automation and Digitalization, Maneuvering

Submission Number: 182083

An Integrated Solution to Predict the Helideck Availability Based on Vessel Motion Criteria 

Offshore helicopter operations are very challenging as they face a plethora of possible hazards such as freezing conditions, thunderstorms, reduced visibility, and even the movement of the helideck due to the environmental agents acting on the vessel. Especially for the latter, innumerous commercial solutions are implemented towards facilitating the green light for landing operations – the Helideck Monitoring System (HMS), for instance. Yet, these systems are restricted to local measurement sensors or, in the best cases, to weather forecasts, mostly concerning wind and visibility aspects.

By widening the scope to include current and wave components, this work proposes an architecture that calculates the movements of the vessel in the helideck position, and applies the operational limits criteria available in renowned standards on the industry. The solution is adaptable to further add-on features, such as the calculation of heading for turret-moored platforms, whose value is a consequence of their weathervane behavior; or even more refined wind profile analysis which could generate turbulence on air flow gaps caused by the vessel upper structures.

The scope of the method is applicable to any helideck mounted on a floating unit as long as their properties are retrieved beforehand – using wind tunnel, towing tests, or CFD simulations for wind and current interactions, wave basin tests or panel methods for wave effects. Thus, as the calculations are based on static and frequency domain models, they can be solved in a relatively fast manner, allowing the procedure to be smoothly integrated into broader systems, such as helicopter route planning.

To illustrate this approach, environmental data from sensors and global reanalysis models (such as ERA5 and HYCOM) were used as inputs to calculate the motions of a modeled drillship's helideck. The results from these calculations were then compared with real measured data, demonstrating very good agreement and thus validating the proposed model.

Presenting Author: Humberto Akira Uehara Sasaki Escola Politécnica da Universidade de São Paulo

Presenting Author Biography: Researcher

Authors:

Humberto Akira Uehara Sasaki Escola Politécnica da Universidade de São Paulo
Asdrubal Do Nascimento Queiroz Filho Escola Politécnica da Universidade de São Paulo
João Vicente Sparano Escola Politécnica da Universidade de São Paulo
Carlos Eduardo Holmes Chads Petrobrás
Alexandre Nicolaos Simos Escola Politécnica da Universidade de São Paulo
Eduardo Aoun Tannuri Escola Politécnica da Universidade de São Paulo