Abstract
As offshore hydrocarbon production moves towards ultra-deep water, flexible risers have to withstand the huge hydro-static pressure without collapse. They are designed with strong collapse capacities, allowing them to operate under the condition where their annuli are flooded by the seawater. However, initial imperfections can weaken the collapse capacity under such a flooded condition, triggering the so-called “wet collapse”. Two common initial imperfections, the carcass ovality and the radial gap between the carcass and pressure armor, would reduce the collapse strength of flexible risers significantly. Mostly, collapse analyses are performed through numerical simulations, which are less feasible for the design stage of flexible risers comparing with analytical models. To date, there are few analytical models available in public literature to predict the wet collapse pressure of flexible risers accounting for initial ovality and gap. To meet this demand, an analytical model is established in this paper to address these issues. This model is developed as a spring-supported arch, solving the collapse pressure with stability theories of ring and arched structures. This analytical model is verified by numerical simulations, which gives prediction results that correlate well with the numerical ones.
Original language | English |
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Article number | 102732 |
Number of pages | 14 |
Journal | Marine Structures |
Volume | 71 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 2020 |
Bibliographical note
Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository 'You share, we take care!' - Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-careOtherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public.
Keywords
- Critical pressure
- Flexible pipes
- Ovalization
- Radial gap
- Wet collapse