energy

PhD and Master's Studentships

Fuel Cell Modeling and Experimentation

Simon Fraser University Fuel Cell Laboratory

Vancouver, Canada

Starting Date: January 1, 2012

The interaction of a subsea pipeline with the seabed is a complex phenomenon. Operational  loads can cause a subsea pipeline to buckle or “walk” over the seabed, leading to very high pipeline stresses. In some cases however, the buckling phenomena can be beneficially used to

relieve excessive stresses by allowing the pipeline to deform at pre-determined locations. The understanding and prediction of these phenomena is therefore crucial for subsea pipeline design.

Coiled tubing is used in a variety of oil well operations including drilling, completions, and  remedial activities. For each of these applications coiled tubing offers the benefits of reduced costs, speed, and reduced environmental impact. Coiled tubing possesses a limitation  however, in that it may buckle in service. In this situation the tubing may be damaged, and operations may be delayed or disrupted. In this Technology Brief, we provide a methodology for evaluating the buckling behavior of coiled wellbore tube.

Mesh construction is a key consideration in the course of building a finite element model. The quality of the analysis results depends on the quality of the mesh; arriving at an acceptable solution requires judicious meshing choices. Specifically, the analyst must consider the type of ele-ments and the density of the mesh, which is often varied throughout the model, with more refinement in critical re-gions. These considerations need to be balanced against the desire to minimize analysis cost in terms of preproc-essing effort, analysis run time, and computer resources.

In the UK, conventional fossil fired plant is operated flexibly, some has now operated in

For high strength carbon fiber reinforced polymers, the design criteria are often specified by the compression strength of the composite materials component. This is due to the fact that the compression strength of unidirectional composites is as low as 50 to 60 percent of the tensile strength. One important compressive failure mode in composite is kink-band formation which for a great deal is governed by the waviness of the fibers and the yielding properties of the matrix material.

Analysis methodologies developed for evaluating three threaded and coupled connectors quantitatively are presented. Two new non-dimensional parameters for assessing the seal leakage and load shoulder separation are introduced for the purpose. Stress Amplification Factor (SAF), defined in API Specification 16R, is scrutinized for what type of stress is to be used and which reference point the alternating stress is measured from. As a result of it, loading sequence Mean Tension with Two Alternating Moments (MT2AM) is proposed for SAF calculation.

The production of hydrocarbons from deepwater reservoirs requires the fabrication and installation of massive infrastructure. As the global energy industry targets hydrocarbon reservoirs in ever deeper water, the use of remote subsea wells to access the reserves and deepwater flowlines to transport the produced hydrocarbons back to floating production platforms will increase.

Since its introduction in the 1960s, coiled tubing (CT) has evolved from smaller sizes and a few cleanout jobs to larger diameters and heavier grades with higher flow rates. Some of the limiting factors, especially on offshore platforms, are limited crane-weight capability and poor weather conditions, which severely limit the size of the reel that can be lifted. With offshore crane capabilities as low as eight tons on some platforms, a CT reel is often transported in two or more sections, requiring offshore assembly.