• Dr. Mir Emad Mousavi
  • Aker Solutions
  • Surge 117A
  • 4:00 p.m.
  • Faculty Host: Dr. Brown

Abstract: Decision making under various uncertainties for highly complex and expensive systems with major failure consequences is a challenge in offshore engineering. Today’s offshore technology has crossed many borders that were hardly imaginable by human in the past; however, such developments have also led to costly lessons that cannot and should not be ignored. It is known today, more than any time before, that human activities on the earth can significantly impact the life of current and future generations. The 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and the issue of Climate Change are just examples of such impacts. The complexity of offshore systems, technology limitations, and the uncertainties associated with environmental and operational conditions, material properties, and analysis tools and methods can collectively increase the risk of offshore activities. This presentation will review some of the risky practices in today’s common offshore engineering and will discuss some of recent developments to improve the associated decision-making processes. The concept of Integrity-based Optimal Design as a basis for managing the uncertainties and optimizing the decisions will be especially discussed. The method is then illustrated by using an operational decision making problem: How to optimize the relocation planning of a multi-SCR offshore station to mitigate the fatigue life of the risers. The results of the conventional and a new computational methods to this problem will be reviewed and compared.
 

Bio: Dr. Mir Emad Mousavi is a licensed Professional Engineer with near 8 years of experience in US and international energy and infrastructural projects. He received a PhD (Civil/Structural 2013) and a MS (Civil/Coastal & Ocean 2009) degree from Texas A&M University and a MS (Civil/Hydraulic Structures 2005) and a BS (Civil 2002) degree from Iran University of Science and Technology. Dr. Mousavi’s primary research interest is on the application of quantitative methods to manage the risks of decisions under uncertain conditions. This includes system reliability analysis for offshore structures. Dr.
Mousavi is also interested in analysis techniques and challenges related to the design of deepwater structural systems and on the development of new technologies for renewable energy production in the offshore environment.