This paper highlights a model‐based systems engineering (MBSE) approach tailored to the unique complexities of developing a consistent functional and physical architecture for retrofittable subsea equipment used in offshore deepwater operations. A new architecture in this application must satisfy demanding requirements in safety, reliability, availability, maintainability, retrofittability, deployment timelines, and interface compatibility. Additionally, the new architecture must be defendable against the industry's decades‐long established regulatory, cultural and technological legacies. To objectively design within these constraints, a system model was developed iteratively using both bottom‐up and top‐down analysis to define a complete functional and physical architecture. Inconsistencies between the functional and physical models encountered are resolved through detailed functional analysis and product realization process. The hybrid bottom‐up, top‐down approach employed, supports continuous stakeholder validation and requirements verification. The tailored MBSE approach and conceptual functional and physical models are presented.
The objective of this paper is to show how a system composed of many individually designed and manufactured components each with independent descriptive and analytical models of varying definition can be developed and managed by an integrated systems model. Typical engineering design methods require the engineering team to manually coordinate and integrate the engineering domains: electrical, hydraulic, mechanical, software, etc. This effort can take an inordinate amount of time and resources and is rife with errors, which inevitably lead to specification issues. Model-based system engineering (MBSE) is a method used extensively in the military and aerospace industries to reduce component integration and system development time for complex systems. This paper examines methods used to integrate the component models during development of a design for a subsea system. The authors describe the application of a commercially available MBSE toolset extended to integrate with analytical physics based design software. The challenges, advantages, disadvantages, and suggested improvements for integrating the models are explored. The authors discuss how their process supports the domains of system engineering including: requirements, behavior, physical architectures and verification strategies, and how this intimately aligns with the typical engineering domains. Finally, the authors discuss the development of an application programming interface (API) to integrate the models and manage the transfer of data between disparate software tool sets and provide suggestions for future projects of similar complexity. The paper discusses how the methods applied reduce duplicate work and specification errors, achieving a reduction in rework, and ultimately, development time and cost. The MBSE methodology has not typically been applied broadly in energy. This paper highlights a successful deployment of MBSE covering early stages of conceptual design to manufacturing. The API developed to permit seamless integration of multiple systems engineering development tools is unique for this type of application. The interoperability between development tools is highly sought after in the engineering community and enables many advanced capabilities for development teams. Some of these capabilities include: end-to-end traceability, automated model development, automated design verification, and automated document generation and design specification.
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