DI G ITAL TR AN S FOR MATION
Above: Seadrill plans to conduct a proof-of-concept trial
with a third-party engineering firm on battery-powered tri-
axial vibration sensors on its West Neptune drillship . The sen-
sors will gather vibration data from the rig’s primary load
path equipment, which Seadrill’s Asset Lifecycle Manage-
ment platform can use to look for patterns that align with
equipment malfunction. Currently the data is taken manually
by rig crews, so automating the process will help to reduce
the workload of those personnel.

Right: Reuter-Stokes, a division of Baker Hughes, offers gam-
ma-ray sensing solutions utilizing scintillators filled with ce-
rium bromide and lanthanum halide crystals. These crystals
provide better light output, enabling faster data acquisition
with more accurate measurements.

process that can often disrupt the operation of primary load path
drilling equipment.

Automating that measurement process will be critical, both in
helping to mitigate the potential negative impacts of those disrup-
tions and to improve the ALCM platform, said John Dady, Director
of Technical Services at Seadrill. “We need to eliminate the need
for unnecessary manual data collection. That’s going to be big in
freeing up the rig crew to handle more critical preventative and
corrective maintenance tasks.”
To measure vibration specifically, Seadrill has been working
with a third-party engineering firm on a proof-of-concept trial
of a battery-powered tri-axial vibration sensor. The sensors can
be activated to take a sample vibration measurement via an
RPM setpoint detection algorithm. The vibration data gathered
by the sensors are first sent over a conventional Wi-Fi network
to the engineering firm’s cloud computing network for display
and status reporting, then to Seadrill’s cloud for analysis within
the ALCM platform. As the platform is directly connected to the
D R I L L I N G C O N T R AC T O R • J U LY/AU G U ST 2023
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