Pipe Routing of Offshore Structure Considering Space Availability

The pipe routing is a difficult work in the detail design of an offshore structure. It takes a long time and many efforts because many pipes exist in the topside of an offshore structure and should avoid interference between the equipment and other pipes. However, most of the pipe routing has been done by hand, so automation of the pipe routing is required. In this study, we present the automation method of pipe routing for saving time and the designer’s effort. The space availability is an important factor in pipe routing, so the algorithm to calculate the space availability is proposed. To reduce the pipe routing time, Dijkstra algorithm considering pipe length, the number of bends, and the space availability is applied for the pipe auto-routing. The implementation result shows that the proposed method can perform the pipe auto-routing considering the space availability.