Simulation of buoyancy aid installation for heavey facilities in deep sea

To reduce the requirement for the lifting capacity and decrease the hoist cable force during the descending and laying processes of subsea production systems, a buoyancy aid installation technology was proposed by applying buoyancy modules on subsea production system to alleviate the lifting weight and releasing the modules after installation. This study developed two models using the Flow3D software package:the subsea production system lowering down model and the buoyancy module floating-up model. It is observed that good agreement existed between the simulation and the experiment results. The simulated results offer quality reference on this new technology.