Model test investigation on an innovative lifting system for deepwater riser installation

An S-lay crane barge,named CNOOC 201,has been built for pipe laying in deepwater oil/gas fields in the South China Sea.It is due to be commissioned by the end of the year 2010.A special lifting system is developed to meet the challenge that installing deepwater risers from an S-lay barge is difficult and has not been achieved.The purpose of this paper was to investigate the model test on such an innovative system,which has to be done before field application.By applying the similarity theory,the movement of the S-lay barge is simulated through a six degrees-of-freedom motion platform,and a truncated model riser is utilized for the model testing.The displacement and force boundary conditions at the truncated position of the riser are obtained from the catenary governing equation and become realized by a slideway cart and a loading system designed to control the configuration of the model riser,which presents a similar configuration to a real riser in deepwater.The test results are in very good agreement with theoretical calculations,showing that the active truncated test is applicable for controlling the configuration of the deepwater riser in model testing investigation.

An Installation System of Deepwater Risers by An S-Lay Vessel

Along with the consumption increase of the petroleum products, more countries have transferred their attentions to the offshore fields, especially the deepwater oil and gas reserves. For deepwater exploitation, the risers must be installed to act as the conduits connecting surface platforms to subsea facilities. In this paper, the typical risers sorted by different classes are introduced, and the correspondent installation methods are presented. By investigating the recent projects performed in the deepwater hot spots, and combining the challenges of HYSY20 l for riser installation, a lifting device developed for assisting riser installation is proposed and detailed to satisfy the installation of deepwater risers in the LW3-1 Gas Field of 1500 m in the South China Sea. Tests on both the functions and performances of such a new system exhibit the satisfaction of meeting all challenging requirements of HYSY201 for application to riser installation in waters up to a depth of 3000 m in the South China Sea.

Experimental Investigation of Disturbing the Flow Field on the Vortex-Induced Vibration of Deepwater Riser Fitted with Gas Jetting Active Vibration Suppression Device

An experimental investigation on the disturbance effect of jet-type active vibration suppression device on vortexinduced vibration of deep-sea riser was carried out in the wave-flow combined flume.The vibration suppression device was designed in which the jet pipe was horizontally fixed to the front end of the riser.By varying three different excitation spacings and multi-stage outflow velocities,the influence law of the dominant frequency,dimensionless displacement and other dynamic response parameters was studied under different excitation spacings,and the mechanism and sensitive characteristics of the disturbance suppression were explored.The results indicate that the variation of excitation spacing makes gas curtain enter the strong disturbed flow region at different velocities and angles,and the coupling relationship between excitation spacing and reduced velocity is the key factor to enter the strong disturbed flow region to achieve the optimal disturbance suppression.In the strong disturbed flow region,the influence of gas curtain on the dominant frequency is obviously affected by the flow velocity,while the vibration displacement is stable at the same amplitude and is weakly affected by the flow velocity.Gas curtain can effectively disturb the formation of vortex shedding,destroy the strong nonlinear coupled vibration of the riser,and achieve better vibration suppression effect.In the weak disturbed flow region,the vortex length of the riser tail is prolonged,the strong nonlinear coupled vibration of the riser is gradually restored,and the vibration suppression effect of the device gradually decreases.

Dynamic Analysis of A Deepwater Drilling Riser with A New Hang-off System

The safety of risers in hang-off states is a vital challenge in offshore oil and gas engineering.A new hang-off system installed on top of risers is proposed for improving the security of risers.This approach leads to a challenging problem:coupling the dynamics of risers with a new hang-off system combined with multiple structures and complex constraints.To accurately analyze the dynamic responses of the coupled system,a coupled dynamic model is established based on the Euler-Bernoulli beam-column theory and penalty function method.A comprehensive analysis method is proposed for coupled dynamic analysis by combining the finite element method and the Newmarkβmethod.An analysis program is also developed in MATLAB for dynamic simulation.The simulation results show that the dynamic performances of the risers at the top part are significantly improved by the new hang-off system,especially the novel design,which includes the centralizer and articulation joint.The bending moment and lateral deformation of the risers at the top part decrease,while the hang-off joint experiences a great bending moment at the bottom of the lateral restraint area which requires particular attention in design and application.The platform navigation speed range under the safety limits of risers expands with the new hang-off system in use.

Parametric Instability Analysis of Deepwater Top-Tensioned Risers Considering Variable Tension Along the Length

Parametric instability of a riser is caused by fluctuation of its tension in time due to the heave motion of floating platform. Many studies have tackled the problem of parametric instability of a riser with constant tension. However, tension in the riser actually varies linearly from the top to the bottom due to the effect of gravity. This paper presents the parametric instability analysis of deepwater top-tensioned risers(TTR) considering the linearly varying tension along the length. Firstly, the governing equation of transverse motion of TTR under parametric excitation is established. This equation is reduced to a system of ordinary differential equations by using the Galerkin method. Then the parametric instability of TTR for three calculation models are investigated by applying the Floquet theory. The results show that the natural frequencies of TTR with variable tension are evidently reduced, the parametric instability zones are significantly increased and the maximum allowable amplitude of platform heave is much smaller under the same damping; The nodes and antinodes of mode shape are no longer uniformly distributed along the axial direction and the amplitude also changes with depth, which leads to coupling between the modes. The combination resonance phenomenon occurs as a result of mode coupling, which causes more serious damage.

Computationally Efficient Approaches to Fatigue Analysis of Deepwater Risers

Riser long-term fatigue performance is an important design consideration. Although extensive application of irregular sea analysis in time domain with the rainflow counting technique for post-processing is regarded as the most accurate of the approaches for fatigue analysis, it does suffer from some limitations, such as the computational effort. For this reason, two computationally efficient approaches are employed to perform the fatigue analysis of a deepwater top-tensioned riser, based on the Longuet-Higgins distribution and time domain scaling respectively. With Longuet-Higgins distribution irregular wave sea states are expanded into their individual wave bins. These regular wave simulations are of short duration and consequently run quickly. Using the time domain scaling technique, the number of irregular wave runs can be performed for a comparatively small number of load cases and hence reduces the calculation time. The results showed a reasonable accuracy and significant efficiency for both approaches, compared with those from the equivalent rainflow analysis. With much less computational effort and disk storage requirement, the approaches outlined in this paper can therefore be used for the fatigue assessment of deepwater risers in industry practice.

Nonlinear Dynamic Analysis of Deepwater Drilling Risers Subjected to Random Loads

Excited by ocean currents, random wave and vessel motion, deepwater drilling risers exhibit significant dynamic response. In time domain, a method is proposed to calculate the nonlinear dynmnic response of deepwater drilling risers subjected to random wave and dynamic large displacement vessel motion boundary condition. Structural and functional loads, external and intemal pressure, free surfaee effect of irregular wave, hydrodynamic forees induced by current and wave, as well as wave and low frequency （drift） motion of the drilling vessel are all accounted for. An example is presented which illustrates the application of the proposed method. The study shows that long term drift motion of the vessel has profound effect on the envelopes of bending stress and lateral displacement, as well as the range of lower flex joint angle of the deepwater riser. It can also be concluded that vessel motion is the principal dynamic loading of nonlinear dynamic response for the deepwater risers rather than wave force.

A modified multi-objective particle swarm optimization approach and its application to the design of a deepwater composite riser

A modified multi-objective particle swarm optimization method is proposed for obtaining Pareto-optimal solutions effectively. Different from traditional multiobjective particle swarm optimization methods, Kriging meta-models and the trapezoid index are introduced and integrated with the traditional one. Kriging meta-models are built to match expensive or black-box functions. By applying Kriging meta-models, function evaluation numbers are decreased and the boundary Pareto-optimal solutions are identified rapidly. For bi-objective optimization problems, the trapezoid index is calculated as the sum of the trapezoid’s area formed by the Pareto-optimal solutions and one objective axis. It can serve as a measure whether the Pareto-optimal solutions converge to the Pareto front. Illustrative examples indicate that to obtain Paretooptimal solutions, the method proposed needs fewer function evaluations than the traditional multi-objective particle swarm optimization method and the non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm II method, and both the accuracy and the computational efficiency are improved. The proposed method is also applied to the design of a deepwater composite riser example in which the structural performances are calculated by numerical analysis. The design aim was to enhance the tension strength and minimize the cost. Under the buckling constraint, the optimal trade-off of tensile strength and material volume is obtained. The results demonstrated that the proposed method can effec tively deal with multi-objective optimizations with black-box functions.

Multiaxial Fatigue Analysis on Reeled Deepwater Steel Catenary Risers with Girth Weld Defects

In the present study, we simulated the reel-lay installation process of deepwater steel catenary risers（SCRs） using the finite element method and proposed multiaxial fatigue analysis for reeled SCRs. The reel-lay method is one of the most efficient and economical pipeline installation methods. However, material properties of reeled risers may change, especially in the weld zone, which can affect the fatigue performance. Applying finite element analysis（FEA）, we simulated an installation load history through the reel, aligner, and straightener and analyzed the property variations. The impact of weld defects during the installation process, lack of penetration and lack of fusion, was also discussed. Based on the FEA results, we used the Brown-Miller criterion combined with the critical plane approach to predict the fatigue life of reeled and non-reeled models. The results indicated that a weld defect has a significant influence on the material properties of a riser, and the reel-lay method can significantly reduce the fatigue life of SCRs. The analysis conclusion can help designers understand the mechanical performance of welds during reel-lay installation.

Numerical Characterization of the Annular Flow Behavior and Pressure Loss in Deepwater Drilling Riser

In drilling a deepwater well,the mud density window is narrow,which needs a precise pressure control to drill the well to its designed depth.Therefore,an accurate characterization of annular flow between the drilling riser and drilling string is critical in well control and drilling safety.Many other factors influencing the change of drilling pressure that should be but have not been studied sufficiently.We used numerical method to simulate the process of drill string rotation and vibration in the riser to show that the rotation and transverse vibration of drill string can increase the axial velocity in the annulus,which results in the improvement of the flow field in the annulus,and the effect on pressure loss and its fluctuation amplitude.In addition,there are also multiple secondary flow vortices in the riser annulus under certain eccentricity conditions,which is different from the phenomenon in an ordinary wellbore.The findings of this research are critical in safely controlling well drilling operation in the deepwater environment.

Simplified Model for Evaluation of VIV-induced Fatigue Damage of Deepwater Marine Risers

A simplified empirical model for fatigue analysis of deepwater marine risers due to vortex-induced vibration (VIV) in non-uniform current is presented. A simplified modal vibration equation is employed according to the characteristics of deepwater top tensioned risers. The response amplitude of each mode is determined by a balance between the energy feeding into the riser over the lock-in regions and the energy dissipated by the fluid damping over the remainder based on the data from self-excited oscillation and forced oscillation experiments of rigid cylinders. Multi-modal VIV fatigue loading is obtained by the square root of the sum of squares approach. Compared with previous works, this model can take fully account of the main intrinsic natures of VIV for low mass ratio structures on lock-in regions, added mass and nonlinear fluid damping. In addition, a closed form solution of fatigue damage is presented for the case of a riser with uniform mass and cross-section oscillating in a uniform flow. Fatigue analysis of a typical deepwater riser operating in Gulf of Mexico and West Africa shows that the current velocity profiles affect the riser’s fatigue life significantly and the most dangerous locations of the riser are also pointed out.

Identification of hydrodynamic coefficients from experiment of vortex-induced vibration of slender riser model

One of the challenges in predicting the dynamic response of deepwater risers under vortex-induced vibration （VIV） is that it runs short of believable fluid loading model. Moreover, the hydrodynamic loading is also difficult to be measured directly in the VIV experiments without disturbing the fluid field. In the present work, by means of a finite element analysis method based on the experimental data of the response displacements, the total instantaneous distributions of hydrodynamic forces together with the hydrodynamic coefficients on the riser model with large aspect ratio （length/ddiameter） of 1750 are achieved. The steady current speeds considered in the experiments of this work are ranging from 0.15 rn/s to 0.60 m/s, giving the Reynolds Number between 2400 and 9600. The hydrodynamic coefficients are evaluated at the fundamental frequency and in the higher order frequency components for both in-line and cross-flow directions. It is found that the Root-Mean Squared hydrodynamic forces of the higher order response frequency are larger than those of the fundamental response frequency. Negative lift or drag coefficients are found in the numerical results which is equivalent to the effect of fluid damping.