As I read this thread I am taking a break from writing a program that could properly be called a stochastic simulation.
The program simulates a simple small refinery that is running on an oil rig in the North Sea. Fluids flow from two fields called Kyle and Banff into this refinery. Each fluid is made up (roughly) of three constituents, oil, gas and water. There are these refining components called separators that separate the fluids into their constituents, i.e into oil, gas and water. Once initial separation is done the oil from both Kyle and Banff are comingled for further processing. Same story for the gas and water. But for accounting purposes one needs to keep track of how much oil came from Kyle and how much from Banff. There is enough instrumentation on board to keep track. Similar story for the oil and gas. The gas is however more complex since part of it is used to fuel machinery, part is flared off, part goes into a gas transmission line and part of the gas is re-injected under pressure into wells on the other end of the field in order to force out more raw fluids. The gas is also analyzed into 14 components by gas chromatographs. Mass, temperature and volume measurements for oil, gas and water are made at various points through out this system so we a can account for where everything goes, i.e. mass conservation for each constituent and for the total flows. We have built an engineering model in software of the various processes involved. Now we driving our model with random inputs (normally distribute flows with mean and standard deviations, a Monte Carlo simulation) in order to see what sort of statistics come out the other end of the beast. Essentially, we have a "what if" and design tool for proving up and testing against actual measured results . At the end of the day the simulator is just one part of the actual instrumentation and auditing mechanisms used by the owners and various government agencies to determine how much oil and gas is coming out of the hole. Around $200,000/day flows from these particular fields so it is worth doing the measurements with some care. It also costs a lot to change something so it is worth a lot of calculation to decide on what to do. It is a fun project. Now I find myself hoping the price of oil goes up, chuckle. Funny how that works. HTH, BobLQ BTW, this is a consulting job with an oil field services company that is headquartered in Norway. I do all of the work remotely via the Internet. One nice perq though they paid most of my expenses for one trip to Norway although nothing about the work really required that I go there. On Friday 30 September 2005 09:37 pm, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > I believe 'stochastic' means 'random'. Many processes you might > want to mimic on a PC are so complex that, > practically speaking, there isn't > an equation to explain it. > For example, the stock market and the weather. > > To simulate these, we simplify our program by assuming they behave > somewhat randomly or stochastically.....so your physics equations > will involve random number generators. > > Hope that helps. > > Chris > > On Sat, Oct 01, 2005 at 01:32:12AM +0000, Todd Walton wrote: > > On 9/30/05, [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > stochastic simulation software for the United States Navy. > > > > Really... > > > > Can you tell me, Chris Seberino, what stochastic simulation software > > is? I've only heard the term used in connection with machine > > learning. M-W.com, which is woefully inadequate in this context, I > > know, says that "stochastic" means "random". But the OED and Google's > > define: say that it means random, but with some sort of big picture > > predictability. Can you elucidate? > > > > -todd -- [email protected] http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-list
