An intelligent design model for offshore petroleum production elements layout

Abstract

An offshore elements layout project consists of positioning oil wells, manifolds and platforms in offshore areas, as well as routing the pipelines that connect these elements. The design process involves a set of restrictions, a great number of decisions and an infinite number of design alternatives. This paper presents a new model to solve this problem based on combining two strategies: divide-and-conquer with Active Design Document. The idea is to generate a great number of alternative solutions and include the user as part of the problem solving. We developed a Computer Aided Design system based on this model, called ADDSUB. The focus of ADDSUB is not to propose the optimum solution for exploring the field, but to assist designers to easily create and analyze alternative solutions. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2012.