Session: 04-01-06 Flexible Pipes and Umbilicals VI

Paper Number: 104823

104823 - Lateral Buckling of Tensile Armor Wires in Flexible Pipe Subject to Axial Compressive and Cyclic Bending Load 

Flexible pipes and subsea cables are often  manufactured with a number of helically wound armor wire layers.. Lateral buckling of tensile armor wire may occur when the flexible pipe is exposed to combined axial compressive load and cyclic bending. During installation and operation in hash offshore environments, the touch down section of the flexible pipe may subjected to compressive axial load together with cyclic bending, which can lead to severe damage to the flexible pipe due to the lateral buckling failure mode. The present study investigates the lateral buckling capacity of one 4" flexible pipe using both the full representation (FULL) of a long segment of the flexible pipe and the simplified representation of a short segment of the flexible pipe by means of Repeated Unit Cell (RUC) modelling technique. The RUC model has been proved to be valid in predicting the onset of the material yield in the most vulnerable tensile layer by comparing the results with the FULL model. Due to its superior computing efficiency against the FULL model, the RUC model is further used to investigate other factors which may have influence in the lateral buckling capacity of the flexible pipe, including geometry of the wire, friction coefficient, lay angle and fabrication tension in anti-buckling tape.

Presenting Author: Naiquan Ye SINTEF Ocean

Presenting Author Biography: Research manager at SINTEF Ocean with research interest in structural behavior of subsea slender structures since 2003.

Authors:

Naiquan Ye SINTEF Ocean
Guomin Ji Norwegian University of Science and Technology
Svein Saevik Norwegian University of Science and Technology