Design and analysis of an automatic control system for deep sea drilling pipe support device

Abstract:

During deep-sea drilling operations， when drilling ships or platforms are conducting pipe retraction and extension operations in the moonpool， in order to avoid collisions between the pipe and the drilling platform or moonpool， this paper designed a pipe support device with a double-layer hydraulic cylinder driven roller mechanism that can effectively constrain the radial displacement of the pipe and buffer the collision force in the moonpool. This article mainly introduces the automatic control system of the support device. The system proposes three identification schemes for couplings to improve the stability of pipe support and the passability of couplings， as well as to cope with complex operating conditions. By building a hardware system with PLC as the main control device and HMI as the upper computer device， combined with PLC main-sub program design and HMI interface design， automatic support of pipes and avoidance of couplings during the retraction and extension process of various specifications of pipes have been achieved. The prototype successfully passed automatic control test of casing coupling identification and support/avoidance through the factory acceptance tests. The machine vision and color recognition solutions achieved 100% identification accuracy， validating the system’s feasibility. Furthermore， the automatic control system exhibits excellent adaptability to different pipe specifications， strong functional expandability， and user-friendly operational characteristics.