| As we all know, the ocean is rich in oil and gas resources. As the increasing demand for energy, there is a growing awareness of the importance of the oceans, and people begin to invest enormous human and material resources to develop marine resources. The underwater connector is widely used in the pipe connection in the ocean engineering. This paper reviews the state-of-art both at home and abroad of the research and application of the clamp connector. It also analyzes several typical clamp connectors. Currently, the clamp connector abroad can work about 1,500 meters under the water, and its maximum internal pressure can reach 15,000psi (10.3MPa).The overall design of the subsea clamp connector is presented in this paper, and the body of the connector uses a 3-petal type structure. The buffer mechanism adopts the passive hydraulic buffering mechanism. The aligning uses the design of cone aligning mechanism.The complete structure of the clamp connector is designed in detail. The analysis is also carried out for the principle of clamp and buffer. The structure design is conducted for the flange, clamp, shell, tighten bolts, rotation nut, ROV joint, as well as the docking device. The detailed calculation is carried out for the hydraulic cylinder, piston rod, cylinder head, piston head, spring, and the collision structure. The 3-dimensional software UG is used to develop the whole model of the connector. It is then used to study the sealing structure of the connector, and the seal ring of the clamp connector is also designed.The Solidworks is used to develop the 3 dimensional model of the clamp connector.Then the model is introduced into the ADAMS software, and the constraints and the drive are built for all the components of the clamp connector. The movement analysis is carried out for the process of aligning, buffer landing, and clamp connection. Through the kinematics simulation of each process, the structure of the clamp connector is validated and proved to be proper and feasible. It also provides references and parameters for the following improvement of the structure design and the further finite element analysis.The ANSYS code is used to carry out the finite element analysis for the clamp connector.The equivalent stress and displacement cloud chart of the flange compressing component and the clamp component under the maxim clamp loading are obtained. The maxim displacement and stress point of the key components are analyzed, and the strength of the components is validated. Some suggestions are put forward about the improvement and optimization of the structure according to the analysis of the dangerous force bearing point. The results show that the strength of the components meets the design requirements, the designed parameters conform to the task goal, and the pressure provided by the clamp component reaches the value that is needed to clamp the flange compressing components. That is to say, the clamp connector can complete the pipe connection job successfully.Finally, the experiment research of internal and external pressure is done for lens gasket sealing ring of 12Cr2Mol, and the result indicates that lens gasket sealing ring meets seal requirements of maximum internal pressure. in addition, it meets design requirements with external pressure of 5MPa or30MPa, which verifies the rationality of the design for flange and sealing ring.Through the theoretical analysis and calculation, the detailed structure of the clamp connector is obtained. According to the simulation and finite element analysis, the conclusions obtained by the theoretical analysis are validated and proved to be proper and feasible. The prototype is developed preliminarily, and it provides some kind of reference for the further design, manufacture and experiment of the engineering prototype. |
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