Dynamic Positioning System Based On Nonlinear Programming For Offshore Platforms Available to Purchase

As the water depth of offshore oil fields increases, a position keeping control system on a platform equipped with thrusters has become essential. In previous control studies for position keeping, the control algorithm was restricted by the type of the platform, the number and the type of its actuators, and nonlinear characteristics of its system. The authors developed a new control algorithm to improve position keeping of a platform, and tested it by numerical simulations and tank experiments. They were the first experiments in the world conducted by reat time control of nonlinear programming. Introduction The number of new oil bearing areas has been decreasing year by year. Therefore, the development of new oil resources at sea is moving its location gradually to deeper sea areas, that is, from existing continental shelves to areas where the continental shelf slopes down to deeper waters. Further, from now on it can be expected that oil resource development in deeper sea areas will experience much more severe environmental conditions. In this situation, a floating production system is receiving more attention as a system suitable for marginal oil development (see Fig. 1 for constituent elements of a floating production platform system). As small scale marine oil development takes place in deeper sea areas, position keeping has become more difficult, when using only a position keeping system with existing mooting methods. This is because of the technical and financial aspects. It is therefore necessary to apply a Dynamic Positioning System (hereinafter refered to as DPS) in conjunction with thrusters. In order to assess the performance of platform control with a DPS, that meets its specification requirements, DPS logic control development and behavior analysis simulation tools are needed.