Abstract
A simple underwater noise model suitable for use with explosives in the decommissioning of oil and gas subsea structures is introduced and evaluated against data from five projects in the US. The performance of the model is compared to four existing models for open water blasts, and for the severance of well conductors and piles. Simulated received underwater sound pressure levels were significantly correlated with measurements for all scenarios. The maximum total error achieved between simulations and measurements was 3.5%, suggesting that predictions are accurate to within 4% of the average measurement. A low relative bias was observed in the simulations when compared to measured values, suggesting only a small systematic underestimate (≤1% of average measurement) for most severance operations and a small overestimate (1.34%) for open water blasts.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 514-533 |
| Number of pages | 20 |
| Journal | Modelling |
| Volume | 2 |
| Issue number | 4 |
| Publication status | Published - 16 Oct 2021 |
Bibliographical note
Acknowledgments: The author is grateful for the feedback from the EDGAR Stakeholder Group: Sarah Canning (JNCC), Julie Cook (BEIS), Ewan Edwards (Marine Scotland Science), Phillip Thomp- son (Thornton Tomasetti) and David Lindsay (SPEX).Funding: This research received no external funding. This work was supported by a Knowledge Exchange Award from the University of Aberdeen [Grant number RG13483].
Data Availability Statement
Data are available in a publicly accessible repository that does not issue DOIs. Publicly available datasets were analysed in this study. These data can be found here: TAP-025, TAP-118, TAP-429, TAP-570, OCS Study MMS 2003-059, OCS Study MMS 2005-013 and OCS Study BOEM 2016-019.Keywords
- underwater noise modelling
- decommissioning
- conductor and pile severance
- explosives
- sound pressure level