1Offshore Technology Institute (OTI), ETF Gas Engineering Building, University of Port Harcourt, Port Harcourt, Nigeria
American Journal of Mechanical Engineering.
2016,
Vol. 4 No. 4, 124-130
DOI: 10.12691/ajme-4-4-1
Copyright © 2016 Science and Education PublishingCite this paper: John Oluwasegun Oladimeji, Chinwuba Victor Ossia, John Umunna Okoli. On the Structural Integrity of S-Lay Method of Pipeline Installation.
American Journal of Mechanical Engineering. 2016; 4(4):124-130. doi: 10.12691/ajme-4-4-1.
Correspondence to: Chinwuba Victor Ossia, Offshore Technology Institute (OTI), ETF Gas Engineering Building, University of Port Harcourt, Port Harcourt, Nigeria. Email:
ossiacv@otiuniport.orgAbstract
This study presents a design template to analyse and check the structural integrity of subsea pipelines installed by S-Lay method. A typical static configuration of the pipeline in equilibrium with wave, current, drag, etc forces was considered in the structural analyses of the installation method. In the template, two scenarios namely: the laying of a single-pipe and the laying of a pipe-in-pipe, were considered. The template developed which was based on a Microsoft Office Platform also considered the lay barge/vessel specifications, met Ocean data, the pipe parameters, critical parameter, and the pipe-lay equipment specifications. The output results from the template include; catenary parameters, tension in pipe, stresses at subsea level and maximum deflection during installation. Typically, with applied top tensions TT of 1177.2kN and 1842.4kN on a pipeline of length 36 m, maximum deflections of (0.26m) and (0.17m), respectively were obtained. The results obtained by the user-friendly template developed corroborate those obtained by manual calculation for the relevant deflections, stress and catenary models for the structural integrity of the pipeline for an S-Lay installation.
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