Research On Intelligent Pipe-Supporting Technology And Its Experiment For Pipe-Laying Vessel

Pipe-Laying Vessel is the main device when oil-gas pipes are laid on the sea. Stinger is the key equipment of the S-type pipe-laying vessel to control the water-entrying angel and keep it safety. The sea wind, wave, and ocean current change the position of pipe-laying vessel and pipe when pipe-laying, which may led pipe to over-bending and plastic deformation and even fracture. The ability of stinger to adjust pipe bending and deformation is important guarantee to improve the security and reliability when pipe-laying. Pipe-supporting technology is studied based on the pipe deformation for the marine environment and associated with PLC, hydraulic and pneumatic technology in this paper. The reseach work as follows:First, the mathematic model is established in the paper based on the pipe is nonlinear, large flexibility and large deformation. Singular perturbation method is used to solve its equation. And some main elements affecting pipe-laying, such as tension force, space between rollers, length of stinger, bend radius that stinger make, is analyzed in this paper.Secondly, a new intelligent stinger support system is put forward to compensate for lack of performance of the existing stinger. The system achieves passive accommodation and active accommodation function. It is based on these hardwares, such as PLC, hydro-cylinder, sensor, air tank and monitor and control softwares, such as Forcecontrol6.1 and Step7-MicroWin. It can counter the adverse influence of the marine environment change on pipe-laying.Finally, experimental model is established and configuration software programmes are compiled in the paper, then model experiment is done in special wavemaking laboratory. The experiment shows that the system can automatically adjust the length of every hydro-cylinder on the support points according to wave, which can adjusts the bending radius of pipe and reduce the bending stress.The new intelligent support system improves the performances of the stinger to adjust pipe bending and deformation, which help to improve the ability of pipe-laying, speed and safety. At the same time, it will provide a valuable reference for future design of pipe-laying vessel.