It ’s the billion - dollar sign doubtfulness for seaward drilling giants : Could the Deepwater Horizon cataclysm have beenprevented ? Researchers atMIT ’s Impact and Crashworthiness Laboratorymay have found at least a partial answer — the same form of reckoner modeling that predicts whether auto components can hold their own in a smash could also forecast whether pipes will break at offshore drilling sites . A fractured pipage can mean the difference between a unchanging operation and a massive oil colour tumble .
The MIT researchers’methodcombines estimator pretending with physical experiment for forecasting . In the automobile industry , this translate to cutting out samples from a commonly used material like steel , spraying the sample with small pane , stick to the cutout into a machine and bombarding it with dissimilar kinds of structuralloads . A camera takes moving-picture show of the textile as it conduct the impact , and air the images to a computer that map the dot along a grid to indicate out where and when deformations showed up .
A similar method of test a variety of sizes and shape of materials under deviate degree of press could also work with deep water oil production pipes , which are invariably subject to intense pressure .
The investigator tested their theory by simulating the condition of last class ’s Deepwater Horizon disaster with a computer model of the drill riser and a reconstruction of the chance event . The result : The example correctly predicted both the placement and type of cracks that caused the wasteweir .
[ Image : Flickr userSkyTruth ]
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