Automation CAE Toolkit Method for Ram BOP Design

A Blowout Preventer (BOP) serves as a safety valve in the drilling process in the oil and gas industry. It will be closed if an influx of formation fluids occurs and threatens the rig. A Ram BOP is one type of widely used BOP. It is composed of two ram blades, which will move towards each other to shear the drilling pipe and to close the valve. To ensure the shearing process be completed on the rig, lab tests are often run to evaluate the BOP’s capability and the required shearing pressure. The paper presents a new automation CAE (Computer-Aided Engineering) toolkit method recently developed to simulate the Ram BOP pipe shearing process. The toolkit method automates and integrates the process from computer aided design (CAD) to computer aided simulation for the Ram shearing process. It significantly simplifies the modeling effort and facilitates the design optimization process.