• Journal of Ocean Engineering and Technology
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• v.31 no.2
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• pp.103-110
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• 2017

The temperature of subsea pipeline, approximately as high as $100^{\circ}C$, is significantly higher than the temperature of surrounding sea water and sediment. In this reason, heat can be lost from the subsea pipeline to cause serious operation problem. Therefore it is important that the subsea pipeline must be designed to ensure that heat loss is small enough. Heat loss of unburied pipeline is higher than buried pipeline. For that purpose, trenching and backfilling system is a commonly used method for maintaining flow assurance in subsea pipeline installation. For this commonly used method, knowing thermal conductivity of backfill is essential to protect a heat loss of pipeline. This paper presents thermal conductivity of backfill soil using laboratory model test and numerical analysis for various backfill. In conclusion, it can be seen that higher the sand content of the man-made backfill sample, the higher the thermal conductivity. On the other hand, as the water content increases, the thermal conductivity becomes smaller.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Marine Environment & Safety
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• v.25 no.6
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• pp.772-779
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• 2019

The subsea pipeline has received considerable attention as a high-value-added industry linked to the energy and steel industries including natural resource development. The design and installation of the subsea pipeline require a variety of key technologies to carry out the project. In particular, a thorough pre-verification process through pre-commissioning is essential for the safe operation of the subsea pipeline. The hydrotesting stage in the pre-commissioning process of the subsea pipeline is known to be affected significantly by the ambient temperature change; however, there is a little study based on the theoretical and numerical approach. In this study, the method of predicting the internal temperature change using the transient heat transfer method for the stage of hydrotesting during the pre-commissioning process of the subsea pipeline and the prediction method of the pressure variation in the pipeline using it were proposed. The predicted results were compared with field test results and its effectiveness was verified. The proposed analysis procedure is expected to contribute to the productivity improvement of the subsea pipeline installation project by enabling the prediction of pressure variation through pipeline heat transfer simulation from the initial design stage of the subsea pipeline installation project.

• Journal of Advanced Research in Ocean Engineering
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• v.3 no.1
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• pp.1-14
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• 2017

The safety analysis of an earthquake is carried out during the operation of a subsea pipeline and an onshore pipeline. Several cases are proposed for consideration. In the case of a buried pipeline, permanent ground deformation by the earthquake and an increase of internal pressure by the acceleration of the earthquake should be considered. In the case of a subsea pipeline, a bending moment is caused by liquefaction of the backfill material on a trenched seabed, etc., which results in a high bending moment of the buried pipeline. The bending moment causes the collapse of the subsea pipeline or a leak of crude oil or gas, which results in economic loss due to enormous environmental contamination and social economic loss owing to operation functional failure. Thus, in order to prevent economic loss and operation loss, structurally sensitive design with regard to seismic characteristics must be performed in the buried pipeline in advance, and the negative impact on the buried pipeline must be minimized by conducting a thorough analysis on the seabed and backfilling material selection. Moreover, it is proposed to consider the selection of material properties for the buried pipeline. A more economical review is also required for detailed study.

• Journal of Ocean Engineering and Technology
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• v.31 no.3
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• pp.219-226
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• 2017

In this study, the impact characteristics of subsea pipelines that were installed in various soil types and burial depths were evaluated by a numerical method. An impact scenario replicated a dropped ship anchor that fell vertically and impacted an installed subsea pipeline. In order to calculate the impact force through terminal velocity, FLUENT, a computational fluid dynamic program and MDM (Moving Deforming Mesh) technique were applied. Next, a dynamic finite element program, ANSYS Explicit Dynamics, was used for impact analysis between the anchor and pipeline (or, subsea if they were buried). Three soil types were considered: loose sand, dense sand and soft clay by applying the Mohr-coulomb model to the seabed. The buried depth was assumed to be 0 m, 1 m and 2 m. In conclusion, a subsea pipeline was the most stable when buried in dense sand at a depth of 2 m to prevent impact damage.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Advanced Composite Structures
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• v.6 no.1
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• pp.51-58
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• 2015

Global buckling is a bending of pipeline and it occurs when the stability of pipeline is distributed by excessive axial force. Subesea pipeline is subjected to axial force induced by temperature and pressure from well and resulting phenomena should be controlled in appropriate manner. Global buckling of subsea pipeline is still ongoing research subject and is studied various organization. In this study, various control methods such as buoyancy module, sleeper, and snake lay for global buckling of subsea pipeline were numerically investigated with various design parameters. From the numerical simulation results, the global buckling control method using sleepers shows better results than buoyancy module and snake lay control methods in the sense of combined stress after buckling. Furthermore, the global buckling of full scale pipeline of 80km with uneven seabed profile were successfully managed when the sleeper was installed.

• Journal of the Society of Naval Architects of Korea
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• v.47 no.2
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• pp.225-232
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• 2010

The requirement of design of High-Pressure/High-Temperature(HP/HT) pipelines on an seabed increases in recent years. The need of research on the analysis method to improve the design capacity is increasing. The purpose of this study is the development of the analysis method of thermal buckling of subsea pipeline structures. The analysis method of thermal buckling was established by using the commercial FEM code(ABAQUS) which shows the outstanding performance in non-linear static FE analysis. The developed method has been applied to the installation of subsea pipeline on the offshore project. For a validation, the comparative study has been carried out. This application to offshore project demonstrates the superiority of the analysis method of thermal buckling of subsea pipeline structures and testifies the application to detail design.

• International Journal of Naval Architecture and Ocean Engineering
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• v.7 no.4
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• pp.720-738
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• 2015

This study examined the dynamic response of a subsea pipeline under an impact load to determine the effect of the seabed soil. A laboratory-scale soil-based pipeline impact test was carried out to investigate the pipeline deformation/strain as well as the interaction with the soil-pipeline. In addition, an impact test was simulated using the finite element technique, and the calculated strain was compared with the experimental results. During the simulation, the pipeline was described based on an elasto-plastic analysis, and the soil was modeled using the Mohr-Coulomb failure criterion. The results obtained were compared with ASME D31.8, and the differences between the analysis results and the rules were specifically investigated. Modified ASME formulae were proposed to calculate the precise structural behavior of a subsea pipeline under an impact load when considering sand- and clay-based seabed soils.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.245-258
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• 2015

A methodology based on distributed fiber optic sensors is proposed to detect the lateral buckling for subsea pipelines in this study. Uncontrolled buckling may lead to serious consequences for the structural integrity of a pipeline. A simple solution to this problem is to control the formation of lateral buckles among the pipeline. This firms the importance of monitoring the occurrence and evolution of pipeline buckling during the installation stage and long-term service cycle. This study reports the experimental investigations on a method for distributed detection of lateral buckling in subsea pipelines with Brillouin fiber optic sensor. The sensing scheme possesses the capability for monitoring the pipeline over the entire structure. The longitudinal strains are monitored by mounting the Brillouin optical time domain analysis (BOTDA) distributed sensors on the outer surface of the pipeline. Then the bending-induced strain is extracted to detect the occurrence and evolution of lateral buckling. Feasibility of the method was validated by using an experimental program on a small scale model pipe. The results demonstrate that the proposed approach is able to detect, in a distributed manner, the onset and progress of lateral buckling in pipelines. The methodology developed in this study provides a promising tool for assessing the structural integrity of subsea pipelines.

• Journal of Computational Design and Engineering
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• v.1 no.3
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• pp.173-186
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• 2014

The failure of a subsea production plant could induce fatal hazards and enormous loss to human lives, environments, and properties. Thus, for securing integrated design safety, core source technologies include subsea system integration that has high safety and reliability and a technique for the subsea flow assurance of subsea production plant and subsea pipeline network fluids. The evaluation of subsea flow assurance needs to be performed considering the performance of a subsea production plant, reservoir production characteristics, and the flow characteristics of multiphase fluids. A subsea production plant is installed in the deep sea, and thus is exposed to a high-pressure/ low-temperature environment. Accordingly, hydrates could be formed inside a subsea production plant or within a subsea pipeline network. These hydrates could induce serious damages by blocking the flow of subsea fluids. In this study, a simulation technology, which can visualize the system configuration of subsea production processes and can simulate stable flow of fluids, was introduced. Most existing subsea simulations have performed the analysis of dynamic behaviors for the installation of subsea facilities or the flow analysis of multiphase flow within pipes. The above studies occupy extensive research areas of the subsea field. In this study, with the goal of simulating the configuration of an entire deep sea production system compared to existing studies, a DES-based simulation technology, which can logically simulate oil production processes in the deep sea, was analyzed, and an implementation example of a simplified case was introduced.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Gas
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• v.15 no.6
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• pp.14-19
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• 2011

The objective of this study was to investigate the effect of the thickness eccentricity on the collapse pressure of a subsea pipeline subjected to external pressure. The collapse behavior of the subsea pipeline containing initial imperfection was evaluated using elastic-plastic finite element (FE) analyses. API 5L X65 and API 5L X80 Pipelines with the thickness eccentricity values between 4~16% were adopted to investigate the plastic collapse under hydrostatic pressure. A parametric study was shown that the plastic collapse pressure decreased when either the thickness eccentricity or the ratio of diameter to thickness increased.