NEWS New innovation at Centek reduces new product design times from weeks to days
New modelling software and a surface response modelling tool means that in the future we will be able to produce new product designs in days rather than weeks.
Engineers from the University of Exeter have worked with our Centre of Excellence engineering team to significantly reduce costs and development times for new products for our customers.
Although many wells are months, even years in development, we are often asked for new sizes at very short notice, with specific requirements depending on the drilling operation. Existing methods for development of centralizers for demanding oil wells can take up to 12 weeks, and can cost several thousand pounds. Costs for delaying drilling operations are extremely high, and so short development time is especially valuable to our customers. Current design and test processes require several concurrent prototypes. Often, further refinements needed after testing can push the cost up further.
The partnership with the University of Exeter was supported by Innovate UK through a Knowledge Transfer Partnership. Using some of the high performance computers, Engineering staff at the University of Exeter and Centek developed specialist modelling software and a surface response modelling tool which will drastically reduce the number of test cycles, and the total cost and time taken to get new products to customers.
By working with the University of Exeter, Centek Group has demonstrated they can produce new product designs within one week. This new design tool, which can run on a smart phone on site at an oil well, will help to further differentiate Centek from its competitors.
"A lot of wells require iterations and we've seen projects which have run to 12, 15 iterations to get the right performance. Now with the chance of hitting it right first time, we're hoping to do it just the once, saving weeks of testing time."
Dr Richard Fletcher, Engineering Manager, Centek Group
"As a KTP Associate I grew as an engineer, as a researcher, as well as a manager. Until a technique is proven, it's difficult for a company to invest such a huge amount in software. The University of Exeter has the software and the computational power to run these simulations."
Dr Amin Hedayetullah, KTP Associate
Reducing product design costs by 80% with the University of Exeter - Video from Centek