Forensic Simulation of the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill

On April 20th, 2010 the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig blew out in a deadly ball of fire. Worse case estimates say that the well spewed out 5 million barrels of oil over 87 days. This is 7 times more than the Exxon Valdez!

On April 20th, 2010 the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig blew out in a deadly ball of fire. Worse case estimates say that the well spewed out 5 million barrels of oil over 87 days. This is 7 times more than the Exxon Valdez!

Why did the blowout preventer (BOP) not stop this ecological disaster? To answer that question a team from Det Norske Veritas (DNV) used forensic simulations and other CAE techniques. Learn from this front line investigative team how FEA helped to discovered what really happened.

This webinar will teach you about:

  • Deepwater Horizon’s timeline
  • Possible Failure Scenarios and Sources
  • Elastic Buckling FEA Models
  • FEA Analysis of a Damaged/Miss Aligned Blind Shear Ram
  • Matching Simulations to Damage Assessments

ENGINEERING.com members can learn what went wrong on the Deepwater Horizon for free! Please fill out the form on the right to access the webinar.

 

Presenters:

Mr. Shane Finneran is a Sr. Engineer and group leader for the DNV Computational Modeling Group. He was a CAE team leader for the forensic investigation of the Deepwater Horizon BOP. He was responsible for the 3D laser scanning, digital forensic reconstruction, and FEA of the failure scenarios.

Mr. Brandon Rollins is a Sr. Engineer at DNV’s Material & Corrosion Technology Center. He works in the Oil & Gas Fatigue and Fracture group. He also served as a team leader for the forensic investigation of the BOP recovered from the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig failure.

Ms. Barbara Padgett is a Sr. Engineer at DNV’s Materials and Corrosion technology Center. She works in the Root Cause Analysis Section and served as a team leader for the forensic investigation of the BOP recovered from the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig failure.