Structural, Fluids, Risk Management Services

STRUCTURAL ENGINEERING AND DESIGN

MMI Engineering provides specialized structural engineering and design services to clients worldwide. Much of the firm's design expertise focuses on structural systems exposed to high demand loading conditions, such as earthquakes, the offshore environment, extreme wind, fire, and blast. We specialize in the design of new build structures and strengthening schemes and retrofits for existing structures in industrial facilities, refinery and petrochemical structures, offshore systems, and water and petrochemical storage tanks.

MMI's licensed or chartered civil and structural engineers routinely contribute to the development of code and criteria documents and serve on various code-forming committees such as the International Standards Organization, American Society of Civil Engineers, American Petroleum Institute, American Concrete Institute, and the British Standards Institute.

STRESS ANALYSIS AND STRUCTURAL MECHANICS

The integration of component stress analysis into overall structural design is a common feature of many of MMI Engineering's projects. Component and sub-system stress analyses include detailed consideration of material nonlinearity, contact, and dynamic response using finite element programs such as ABAQUS, LS-DYNA, and NASTRAN. MMI's engineers use these tools to characterize structural problems, assess loading regimes and structural response, and to develop remedial or mitigating actions to improve system performance. When necessary, we have customized analytical tools by adding specific material models or tailoring loading routines for more realistic numerical representation of physical problems. In addition to the extensive use of finite element analysis tools, our engineers have considerable experience in the interpretation and application of results in conjunction with design codes of practice.

STRUCTURAL INTEGRITY ASSURANCE

MMI Engineering provides structural integrity assurance services to manage risk posed to life, business continuity, and the environment from a variety of hazards such as fires, explosions, extreme natural events, and chemical releases. We first model the hazards and then assess the structure for the appropriate performance requirement, i.e., life safety or asset protection. We also develop cost effective mitigation measures that meet performance and regulatory requirements.

The techniques and skills required for structural integrity assurance are broad, ranging from basic code checks to demonstration of fitness-for-purpose. These assessments are performed using advanced finite element analysis and fracture mechanics coupled with detailed risk and reliability modeling techniques. In assuring the integrity of structural systems, the quantification and ranking of the risk contribution of individual components is key to identifying an effective assurance scheme. MMI's experience in structural integrity assurance methods covers the whole spectrum of complexity.

RISERS AND UMBILICAL SYSTEMS

MMI Engineering works with owners, operators, installation contractors, and other engineering firms to design and assess riser and mooring systems. We have experience in the design of steel catenary risers (including engineering criticality assessments), unbonded flexible risers including all composite cross sections and umbilicals for facilities located throughout the world and in shallow and deep water.

MMI's engineers are involved in the complete project cycle from concept, to FEED, through detailed design and subsequent support for installation. Our work experience includes specification of buoyancy and weight modules as well as specification and design of bend stiffeners and bend restrictors for flexible risers. We have also performed interference assessments, fatigue and durability analyses, engineering criticality assessments, and accident load case assessments.

Most of our analytical work for riser systems is carried out using OrcaFlex, the state-of-the-art riser analysis package developed by Orcina Limited (www.orcina.com). MMI Engineering, jointly with Stewart Technology Associates (www.stewart-usa.com), are agents for Orcina in North America. We provide on-site and open training for OrcaFlex and technical sales and support.

BLAST ENGINEERING

MMI Engineering offers considerable experience evaluating blast loads. Our expertise ranges from defining blast scenarios to quantifying overpressure and duration data with distance from a blast source. We employ computational fluid dynamics (CFD) techniques for both dispersion analysis and load prediction. The analytical techniques are calibrated with available data to develop realistic loading scenarios. MMI are expert users of specialist explosion modeling software packages such as FLACS.

MMI Engineering incorporates blast effects in the overall design process to identify modifications resulting from blast loads early in the design cycle to minimize cost and schedule overruns. Our services include evaluation of the performance of individual structural components, and the response of buildings and foundations. We use procedures ranging from simplified calculations to detailed non-linear analyses using ABAQUS/Standard, ABAQUS/Explicit, and LS-DYNA software. We pay considerable attention to the response of a building's nonstructural and architectural components such as cladding or panelling to ensure the response is within limits of deformation, strain, and stability under blast loading. Existing control buildings in industrial facilities are often found to have inadequate blast resistance under the API 752 facility siting requirements, or have an increase in hazard exposure due to subsequent addition of new high energy units. MMI Engineering has developed unique qualifications to evaluate and design retrofit strategies that allow for minimal down time during construction and minimal interference with existing operations.

MMI Engineering is assisting a number of major operators in the evaluation of existing control buildings and other building structures for blast loading at their facilities in the US. Buildings under evaluation have ranged in age from recent construction to up to 50 years old, and covered many types of materials of construction including reinforced concrete, prestressed concrete, unreinforced masonry, and steel construction. We have also designed over 100 new build structures and control rooms for petrochemical and refining facilities in the US.

MMI Engineering has acted as owners' engineers on behalf of facility operators, as part of larger design teams dealing specifically with issues related to structural response from blast loads, and as structural designers and engineers-of-record with approval authority over design packages. We have designed over 100 blast-resistant buildings control rooms/operator shelters and their supporting foundations in petrochemical and refining facilities throughout the world. Our blast design process starts with development of the design basis and integrates the building and foundation designs from concept to detailed engineering to optimize structural response and minimize the volume of construction material.

MMI staff have also served as expert witnesses to characterize the impact of a refinery explosion on structures that were adjacent to the facility.

FIRE ENGINEERING

Fire loading on structures affects both the safety of personnel and damage to the asset itself. In all instances, the hazard can be modeled; performance requirements placed on the structure for life safety or asset protection, the structure assessed, and mitigation measures proposed that meet the performance and/or regulatory requirements. MMI Engineering undertakes all aspects of structural fire engineering, offering a managed fire protection service. Combining materials know-how, advanced fire modeling, and structural analysis tools such as FRED, CFX, and USFOS, and practical experience of specification development and certification, we manage the complete area of PFP, including auditing. Specific services and skills include:

 PFP condition assessments
 Fire Risk Assessment
 Use of CFD and phenomenological tools for fire hazard modeling
 Performance standard development
 Ultimate collapse modeling of under fire loading
 PFP optimization and material selection
 Testing, R&D, and Certification management
 Audit and Quality Assurance

EARTHQUAKE ENGINEERING

Earthquakes have a potential for causing great and sudden loss to life and property within a matter of few seconds. MMI's engineers specialize in managing these losses to minimize their social and economic impacts. We offer expertise in geology, seismology, geotechnical engineering, structural engineering, and financial loss modeling to help clients mitigate the unexpected consequences of earthquakes. We provide these services to the owners and operators of petrochemical facilities, water and wastewater lifelines, energy producing facilities, and commercial properties.

MMI Engineering uses state-of-the-art seismic hazard analysis techniques to assess seismic hazard at a site. We use probabilistic and deterministic procedures to quantify seismic hazard in terms of response spectra and time histories and develop project specific design criteria. Our engineers have expertise in the assessment and mitigation of earthquake related ground failures such as liquefaction, lateral spread, surface fault rupture and land slides.

MMI's earthquake engineers have special expertise in structural dynamics and seismic retrofit design. We use sophisticated analytical tools such as ABAQUS, SAP2000, and LSDYNA, to study the dynamic response of structures. Coupled with our hands-on structural design capabilities, MMI Engineering develops practical, reliable, and cost effective design solutions for refineries, petrochemical complexes, offshore facilities, and lifeline systems.

We provide seismic loss assessment services to clients in the financial, commercial real estate, and insurance sectors using probabilistic risk assessment techniques to quantify the risk in terms of expected dollar loss for single buildings to portfolios of buildings. We also perform post-earthquake reconnaissance work for clients to assess the safety of structures and to help in minimizing the economic impacts of the disaster. MMI engineers have been members of multi-national reconnaissance teams that have deployed following major earthquakes world-wide.

MMI staff members have been heavily involved in seismic hazard mitigation projects undertaken at major U.S., Venezuelan, Israeli, Greek, Peruvian, and Argentine oil refineries, petrochemical facilities, LNG facilities, pipelines, tank terminals, and offshore platforms.

SEISMIC HAZARD ASSESSMENT

For any major infrastructure project, definition and establishment of seismic design criteria is one of the most significant steps in early project development and in subsequent detailed design. Seismic design criterion has significant implications over project economics and risk exposure over the life of the facility. MMI Engineering has substantial experience in developing seismic design criteria for a range of critical infrastructure located throughout the world.

We use state-of-the-art probabilistic seismic hazard analysis techniques to develop site-specific seismic design parameters, such as response spectra and time histories, as a function of exceedance probability over the project design life. Our experience ranges from establishing operating basis earthquake (OBE) and safe shutdown earthquake (SSE) for liquefied natural gas (LNG) facilities, strength level earthquake (SLE) and ductility level earthquake (DLE) for offshore structures and design level ground motions for petrochemical facilities, bridges, hospitals, commercial and industrial facilities including development of acceleration time histories for seismic probabilistic risk assessment (PRA) for nuclear facilities. MMI Engineering staff has provided seismic hazard assessment services for structures located in a variety of geologic and tectonic settings including active subduction zone regions of Peru, Chile, Indonesia, Alaska, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea and the Pacific Northwest of the United States; transform regions such as California; and stable continental regions of West Africa, Middle East and multiple locations in the Central and Eastern United States including the New Madrid, Charleston and the Wasatch Front areas.

WATER INFRASTRUCTURE RELIABILITY ASSESSMENT

MMI Engineering has extensive experience in performing multi-hazard reliability assessment of critical lifelines, especially water and wastewater systems that are distributed over a large geographical area and traverse zones of varying geology and topography. To ensure a reliable performance of lifelines all of these hazards should be mitigated in a consistent manner with due consideration to the importance and criticality of each component. A comprehensive assessment of such system requires multi-disciplinary expertise. MMI Engineering’s senior practitioners possess knowledge and expertise in structural engineering, geotechnical engineering, earthquake engineering, system operations, and probabilistic techniques. MMI Engineering’s range of services includes:

System reliability assessment and development of capital improvement programs
Security and vulnerability assessment
DMA2000 based Local Hazard Mitigation Plans (LHMP) and cost/benefit analysis for FEMA pre-disaster mitigation (PDM) grants
Seismic assessment and retrofit design of individual structural components such as storage tanks and reservoirs, treatment facilities, transmission and distribution system pipelines, process and chemical tanks and pump station buildings and equipment
Specialized design of pipelines subjected to large ground displacement such as fault and river crossings and pipelines crossing zones of active landslides

CLEAN ENERGY TECHNOLOGY

MMI Engineering has established a strong presence in the emerging sector of Clean Energy Technology. Spanning wind and ocean renewables, hydrogen for transport, and carbon capture and storage, the firm offers a range of engineering, safety, and risk management services to the clean energy sector. Our work in the Clean Energy Technology is ultimately intended to support clients achieve and demonstrate regulatory and public acceptance for these novel and challenging projects.

Wind and Wave Energy Systems
MMI provides structural design and marine engineering services for offshore wind generation systems. This work includes conceptual development and evaluation, power generation reliability assessments, site wind pattern studies using CFD, front-end engineering and design, design review and verification and specialized analyses to assess the complex behaviour of ocean energy systems.

MMI also provides design support services for wave energy conversion devices including the design of mooring systems and power takeoff cable configurations for deep and shallow water configurations. Our work covers conceptual design, front-end engineering and detailed design including the specification of mooring system components, anchor sizing and installation analysis.

Hydrogen
Since providing major accident hazard analysis and blast engineering services to one of the world’s first hydrogen for transport fuelling facilities, MMI has since been involved in providing support to developers of similar facilities in Europe and the US. This support includes review of facility layout, hazard identification and analysis and design against major accidental and natural hazards.

Carbon Capture
Seen by many as an important bridging technology, large scale carbon capture and storage presents many engineering and hazard management challenges. MMI has been involved in a number of pioneering CCS projects and continues to support projects in the US, Europe and Middle East. Principal services include consequence modelling of all relevant major accident hazards, including hydrogen syngas deflagration, detonation and jet fires, H2S release and dispersion, and release and dispersion of sub-cooled, liquid and supercritical CO2 from both pipelines and plant.

RISK ASSESSMENT AND RISK MANAGEMENT

MMI Engineering has extensive experience applying risk assessment and management techniques. Rule sets and assumptions in risk assessments can be modified to reduce perceived risk, but MMI Engineering understands that this is an improvement on paper only. The only way to reduce risk is to apply sound engineering throughout the FEED, design, construction, maintenance, operation and decommissioning cycles of a given project. Our risk assessment and management services include:

Quantitative Risk Assessments
HAZOPs/HAZIDs
Fault Tree and Event Tree Analysis
FMEAs
SIL Assessments and Layers of Protection Analysis
Performance Standard development
ALARP demonstrations
Safety Case Development

MODELING OF MAN-MADE HAZARDS

MMI Engineering offers expertise in detailed CFD modeling using CFX, FLACS, and CEBAM, and along with phenomenological models, such as FRED and SCOPE, for the following man-made hazards and scenarios:

Explosion consequence modeling for flammable clouds and condensed phase explosives
Underwater explosions
Air and water-borne dispersion modeling
Liquid and cryogenic liquid spillage and release consequences on land, sea, and into water courses
Dense phase gas modeling and release
Pressure vessel explosions and pipe whip
Missile hazard assessments
Fire consequence modeling

MMI has developed a number of in-house software codes for specialist requirements such as pipeline blow down and release modeling, and subsea bubble plume releases.

REGIONAL LOSS ESTIMATION APPLICATIONS

MMI Engineering personnel have significant experience in the development of comprehensive regional scenario loss estimates for earthquakes, floods, and other hazard events, for use in emergency preparedness, disaster planning, and mitigation. Tools include the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s HAZUS®MH software for multi-hazard loss estimation.
Several senior MMI personnel led HAZUS pilot projects in the mid-1990’s, participated in the development of the flood module for HAZUS-MH, and have been using HAZUS® in research and applications. These individuals are part of a relatively few select group of individuals who are FEMA “Authorized HAZUS®MH Vendors for Earthquake Analysis.” MMI’s expertise in this area of practice includes development of customized regional building inventory and construction characteristics databases, facility-specific databases, such as those for essential facilities, and transportation system modeling. MMI’s clients include federal, state, and local emergency management agencies, as well as various research organizations.

CASUALTY MODELING

An important component of loss mitigation is the reduction of potential deaths and injuries. Modeling of potential disaster-related casualties often requires a multi-disciplinary approach. Senior MMI Engineering personnel have been performing multi-disciplinary research at the interface of engineering and public health for more than a decade, including investigating the human impacts of natural and man-made disasters, such as earthquakes, floods, and acts of terrorism, and translating this information into better engineering-based loss estimation methods and models. Much of this work has been conducted collaboratively with public health and medical experts at the UCLA Center for Public Health and Disasters (www.cphd.ucla.edu).

PROCESS ENGINEERING DESIGN FOR THE WATER AND CHEMICAL INDUSTRIES

An important part of any fluid system is the interaction of the fluid with its surroundings and discrete components. MMI Engineering has specialist knowledge of fluid modeling for applications across many industry sectors such as water treatment, nuclear and chemical/process using CFD codes such as ANSYS CFX (www.ansys.com).

For the Water Treatment industry, settlement and re-suspension of sludge is a key process application; this is also becoming increasingly important for nuclear decommissioning studies. MMI Engineering has developed CFD models for design of clarifier units, assessment of solids loading under different operating conditions and unit sensitivity to floc settling characteristics (www.clarisim.net).

In the Chemical/process sector, product scale up requires a thorough understanding of operating conditions at the pilot scale to eliminate effects such as poor mixing which lead to product wastage. CFD studies at pilot scale allow design engineers to eliminate potentially expensive problems early on the product lifecycle.

In the Energy sector, waste recovery applications using advanced incineration equipment has benefited from detailed CFD simulation to promote optimum residence time for fuel/air combinations. In this way, modeling can identify ways to increase combustion efficiency and throughput of material.

Our specific skills include addressing:

Multi-phase flow applications such as solids sedimentation, gas entrainment, and reacting flows.
Heat transfer examples combining conduction, convection, and radiation.
Compressible systems including real gases and high speed flows.
Process scale up from pilot to production levels.

SERVICES TO THE NUCLEAR POWER INDUSTRY

MMI Engineering's specialized structural and fluid mechanics capabilities have significant applicability within the nuclear power industry. With the understanding of the particular needs and regulatory environment gained by many of our staff through experience in the nuclear power industry, MMI offers highly qualified and effective support to nuclear power owners and operators in addressing a variety of engineering challenges. Specific service areas include the following:

Linear and nonlinear, static and dynamic response and stress analysis and seismic qualification of structures, equipment and distributive systems, such as piping and electrical raceway systems
Seismic probabilistic safety assessment
Probabilistic seismic fragility analysis of equipment and buildings
Impact analysis due to tornado missiles, malevolent aircraft impact or accidental heavy load drop
Analysis of response to hydrodynamic loads such as due to safety relief valve discharge
Fatigue analysis of reactor or steam generator components
Analysis of containment ultimate capacity for use in Level 2 probabilistic safety assessment
Structural integrity assessment to include:
- Low and high temperature fracture assessment methods (R6, R5, BS 7910, ASME XI)
- Determination of contour integrals using non-linear fracture mechanics finite element models
- Determination of welding residual stresses using finite element analysis
- Two-parameter fracture mechanics (T, Q, hydrostatic stresses)
- Local approaches to determine fracture probability for both brittle and ductile fracture regimes
- Release, ventilation, and thermofluids modeling and assessment for complex problems using CFX,FLUENT