April 29, 2019 — Southwest Research Institute will give presentations detailing its wide range of testing and research capabilities at the 2019 Offshore Technology Conference (OTC) in Houston from May 6 to 9.
OTC is an annual conference that allows energy industry professionals to exchange ideas and collaborate to advance scientific and technical knowledge for offshore resources and environmental matters. SwRI will be making presentations and offering a set of live technology demonstrations.
“We’re excited to engage with people at OTC, which is one of the largest and most important gatherings in the industry,” said Eric Thompson, program manager of SwRI’s Marine Structures and Engineering Section. “We really want to show what makes the Institute so forward-thinking and wide-reaching in its capabilities.”
SwRI’s live demonstrations include the latest generation of SwRI’s guided wave inspection system, the MsSR®v5, which uses ultrasonic guided waves to perform long-range inspection and structural health monitoring of industrial drilling structures more cost-effectively. Additionally, SwRI engineers will demonstrate how the Institute applies typical strain measuring devices in atypical situations, such as extreme pressures and temperatures.
The Institute will offer a variety of presentations throughout the four-day conference. On Tuesday, May 7, SwRI staff will first discuss industry-wide capabilities with respect to hydrostatic pressure testing, focusing specifically on SwRI’s Ocean Simulation Laboratory, which is capable of evaluating equipment at the full range of ocean pressures. The second presentation of the day will address fire testing capabilities for Offshore Technologies. Next will be a presentation on multiphase flow loop performance testing. In the petroleum industry, a variety of measurement and processing equipment encounters multiphase flows, which can be difficult to predict and measure. SwRI engineers will elaborate on novel techniques used to evaluate the design and performance of oil and gas equipment. An overview of the Institute’s considerable automotive engineering research and testing resources will be followed by a presentation of the past, present and future of technologies that evaluate and qualify offshore risers, conduits that transport material from the seafloor to the platform.
The next day, presentations include a discussion in Mandarin by research engineer Dr. Fang Pan about the impact time can have on structures in nearly every industry from deep sea to deep space. A presentation in Spanish and English will follow, covering the fabrication and precision machining capabilities of SwRI. Additionally, Chris Storey, manager of the SwRI Ocean Simulation Laboratory, will outline more minutely the applications and capabilities of the laboratory. The day will close with presentations about improving accelerated testing protocols to better predict coating performance in challenging environments and the resilience of onshore oil storage tanks and new leak detection technology.
On the final day of the conference, SwRI will reach out to the next generation of engineers with a presentation tailored to students.
Visit Southwest Research Institute at OTC 2019 at Booth No. 2201.
For a full schedule of SwRI’s presentations and demonstrations, visit https://www.swri.org/event/offshore-technology-conference.
For more information, visit Marine Structures & Engineering or contact Joanna Carver, (210) 522-2073, Communications Department, Southwest Research Institute, 6220 Culebra Road, San Antonio, TX 78238-5166.