Simulation of Shutdown and Restarting Process of Heated Oil Pipelines

During the operation process of heated oil transportation pipelines, shutdown accidents may be caused by some faults. In view of hydraulic and thermodynamic characteristics, the transient simulation model of heated oil pipelines is established based on hydrodynamic theories. The model is composed of quasilinear hyperbolic partial differential equations. Integration with the boundary conditions that are pressures, temperatures, flow rates and other factors which are obtained while shutdown and restart process, method of characteristic and finite difference method are applied to solve this model. The VB and Matlab hybrid programming technology which is based on COM technical is utilized to develop simulation software which is used to simulate the restarting process after shutdown. Then the safety time of shutdown and maximum transient pressure are determined. The results show the integration of mathematic model and computer simulation can simulate the restarting process successfully.