FAMUS II: Risk-based design of offshore oil and gas production system - management of uncertainties by integrating flow assurance and reliability aspects into a RAM model

The FAMUS project (Flow Assurance by Management of Uncertainties and Simulation) is a Joint Industry Project run by DNV and IFP and sponsored by Total, Statoil, ENI, GDF and Petrobras. Its goal is to couple RAM modelling with Flow Assurance issues in order to provide realistic decision support. The FAMUS methodology proposes a new approach in which a global model of the system is built based on a Discrete Event Simulation Model including traditional equipment failure, repair and support modelling in which Flow Assurance issues modelled by Response Surface Models (RSMs) are directly integrated. In this paper, the global model of the system is built based on the library system found in the Discrete Event Simulator EXTEND. In a model with traditional RAM type building blocks, flow assurance blocks are added from the 'FAMUS library'. The work focuses both on the integration of Flow Assurance Issues in principle and on Sand Erosion issues in a representative production system demonstrating that the methodology works and indeed provides improved decision support for systems where Flow Assurance issues are relevant. A Petri-Net based approach with focus on some other flow assurance issues is presented in a companion paper.