LR to develop structural digital twin for Bluewater FPSO Glas Dowr

LR is contracted by Bluewater Energy Services B.V. (Bluewater), a designer and operator of Floating Production, Storage, and Offloading (FPSO) units, to provide a comprehensive digital twin and evaluation of an FPSO’s structure, using historical and real-time data of the asset. This will help Bluewater assess Glas Dowr’s operational readiness and redeployment options.

LR will do this by delivering a ‘Structural Digital Twin’ model of the Glas Dowr FPSO, using its proprietary cloud-based technology that will determine the FPSO’s global and fatigue hull strength for selected geographical locations through a combination of historical design, operational and measurement data, and real-time in-service performance data.

LR’s digital solution, an integration of a multi-physics models, sensor information and design data of the unit, will be used to mirror and predict the status and life of its corresponding physical twin. This will enhance the operation of Glas Dowr, giving Bluewater the ability to comprehend and predict the structural performance at the new field prior to physical redeployment.

As the digital twin is designed to continuously collect and process sensor data, it presents a constant evolving picture of the FPSO’s status so Bluewater can assess the asset’s health status at all times.

In the first phase, LR will deploy the FPSO Structural Digital Twin using the historical measurement, design and operational data of the unit, in order to run operational scenarios and historical simulations to evaluate the asset’s structural utilisation to train the twin.

In the following phase, LR will run a redeployment assessment based on selected future operational scenarios for envisaged redeployments and assess its feasibility based on a calculated structural integrity assessment.    

Peter Burger, Vice President Technology, Bluewater Energy Services BV, said:

“We [Bluewater] decided to extend our digital twin programme to include our FPSO Glas Dowr. Our ambition for the structures largely matched with the novel digitalisation services of LR. We are therefore pleased to team up with LR to accelerate assessment for redeployment of this most versatile FPSO, designed and proven to operate in harsh and mild environments with high uptimes and a maintained, strict regulatory and safety regime. This will enable redeployment in most fields across the globe, also including a return to its origin, the North Sea.”

Luis Benito, LR’s Marine & Offshore Innovation and Co-Creation Director, said:

“With Bluewater, we are recreating the way customers obtain business value out of enhancing their assets throughout their lifecycle, from design, production, re-deployment to decommissioning. We are creating cloud-based digital twin technologies, which are at the core of our digital solutions suite, which will deliver outcomes for customers to manage and optimise their offshore assets in operation, reducing their overall operational expenditure.”