SimPulse: Scalable Hydraulic Transients in 21st Century Piping Systems

C55-01b-270667-AbstractThe world has started to transition to using hybrid-energy systems. As this transition progresses, many companies have started to re-purpose existing, aging assets. This re-purposing of aging assets can be prominently seen in the areas of biofuels processing and in hydrogen and carbon dioxide transmission pipelines. A core issue with repurposing aging assets lies in the often-overlooked complex piping systems and offsite piping networks that serve as the vascular network of any industrial processing operation. A leading driver of change in these industries is real world incidents that lead to the creation of new regulations governing the safe operation and management of these complex piping networks. Often, the industry’s software tools, management plans, and best practices lag any new regulations that are introduced. Common events, such as pump failures, in these complex networks can cause pressure pulsations or shocks that can catastrophically damage the downstream piping systems, leading to failure and environmental disaster. With the increasing complexity of modern-day piping systems and the multimodal demands that these systems face, improved simulation methods for predicting transient damage have never been more of a necessity in this ever-changing energy arena. To help Process Engineers accurately simulate upset conditions in complex piping networks, we will develop a scalable hydraulic transient software suite: SimPulse. The novelties of SimPulse are twofold: 1) a scalable backend that can manage a diverse range of event-driven transient phenomena in complex networks, and 2) a pipe-engineer tailored interface via our Standard Piping Language (SPL) input format that has been highly successful in our other commercial pipe-stress engineering products. The key challenge of modeling a piping network is the complex interconnection of pipes, junctions, valves, and fittings, coupled with the various event-driven phenomena that can occur, e.g., valve and pump failures, rapid phase transitions, and bursts. All these complexities require any simulation engine to be able to manage the computational scalability in both spatial and temporal contexts. Accurate simulation of hydraulic events is critical to the understanding of potential damage and the risk of rupture events causing widespread environmental damage. By connecting the hydraulic picture with the atmospheric plumes of leaks and bursts, this project will give a more accurate description of the overall risk landscape. The integration of high-performance computing libraries will allow scalability in this application domain not previously possible. At its core, SimPulse will solve hydraulic transients in complex piping networks, both in the normal operating state as well as after the occurrence of transient events. It will then relate this transient picture to potential damage via stress analysis, and risk mitigation. SimPulse will ensure that piping systems are safely code complaint, regardless of their complexity.