TRIZ – Driven Design of Inspection ROVs for Offshore Oil andGas Infrastructure

Abstract

The development of the oil and gas sector, particularly offshore production and transportation, requires the creation of a wide range of diagnostic equipment capable of inspecting risers, pipelines, and platform foundations under challenging conditions. Elements of this infrastructure may be exposed to strong currents, high water turbidity, great depths, seabed burial, or biological fouling. As a result, the use of standardized remotely operated vehicle (ROV) configurations is often impractical. It leads to a set of challenges spanning the design of marine vehicles as well as the resolution of physical, technological, and software-related problems, including optimization of equipment placement and layout. During the design of an ROV, engineers must address issues related to power supply, buoyancy, hull strength, communication systems, installation of control and monitoring instruments, integration of diagnostic equipment, and the principles for data handling and storage. These parameters are typically interdependent, which necessitates multivariate analysis and comprehensive optimization. The study develops and presents a method for optimizing the parameters of an ROV intended for the inspection of risers and offshore oil and gas platform foundations, based on TRIZ (Theory of Inventive Problem Solving). The existing regulatory framework for ROVs is incorporated, the types of optimization tasks are identified, and the necessary input data sets are examined. The work demonstrates how combining TRIZ principles with multifactor optimization methods can yield an optimal design and layout solution for an ROV. As a result, TRIZ methods have been adapted to the problem of designing ROVs for the inspection of offshore oil and gas facilities.