| Energy is important to the progress and civilization of human beings, and there is a great reserve of resources in ocean, thus reasonable exploitation of the marine resources has gained worldwide attention. Offshore pipeline is an important part of oil and gas exploitation projects. Steel pipes have been widely used in offshore pipelines, however, many problems exists for using steel pipe such as poor corrosion resistance, high cost of installation and maintenance etc. Filament-wound fiber-reinforced composite pipe (RTP pipe) is a kind of composite pipe, which is a new choice for the offshore applications for the merit of corrosion resistance, excellent flexibility and low cost for transportation and installation. For the complexity of application environment in ocean, there are new challenges in the design, transportation, installation and operation for offshore application of RTP pipe.RTP pipe consists of cylindrical polythene layers and helically wound fiber-reinforced tapes. The unique properties of RTP stems from the special construction and materials. This paper focused on the relevant properties of RTP pipe in offshore applications, includes the buckling responses of pipe under bending or combined bending and axial tension, the offshore installation analysis of RTP. The main works done in the paper can be summarized as follows:(1) Combining the unique construction of RTP pipe, simplified models were proposed for each layer and the material test was done for HDPE. Based on the nonlinear ring theory, the ovalization instability of RTP under pure bending, combined bending and tension was investigated, and corresponding numerical solution and calculation program were proposed.(2) Designing the bending test of RTP pipe, and obtaining the experimental data including the bending moment and curvature; the results can provide reference data for theoretical analysis and finite element simulation.(3) Detailed finite element model of RTP pipe was established using ABAQUS, and the simulation results were compared with the results obtained from test and theoretical method.(4) Depend on the theoretical method, several key parameters, such as diameter, wall-thickness, D/t ratio, loading type and loading path etc., were carried out to investigate the effects on the loading capacity of pipe.(5) A numerical installation method based on the catenary theory was used to analysis the offshore installation of RTP pipe, and the results was compared with simulation results using ABAQUS. What’s more, several factors were also investigated in sensitivity analysis of installation. |
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