In recent years, proper documentation of adequate wellhead fatigue capacity for a planned drilling operation became progressively more important while simultaneously challenging to achieve with traditional wellhead design and existing fatigue analyses methodologies applied. These challenges have developed as a result of the increase in size of drilling rigs and Blowout Preventers (BOPs), longer drilling campaigns on wells, and operations in harsher environments. In response, the industry started directing its efforts in two main areas:
Design side-with the fatigue enhanced well head designs
Analysis side-increasing the activities toward calibration of the analytical tools.
Aker Solutions which recently developed their Slimline Rigid Lockdown (SRLD) wellhead system and Statoil, at the forefront in well head fatigue studies and instrumentation campaigns, decided to cooperate on a pilot project. Together they sought to achieve their combined goals of assessing the SRLD performances in the field and producing a data set of full scale measurements during drilling operations which could be used to validate and calibrate the theoretical wellhead fatigue calculation methodologies.
