A finite element based study on lowering operation of subsea massive structure

Abstract

Subsea production system has been increasingly used in recent South China Sea offshore developments. With deepwater applications, constituent parts of subsea systems become more complicated and enlarged. Increases on the weight and geometry of each component bring challenges to installations. A recent accomplished deployment on a subsea massive jumper shows the weight and length have been up to 120 tons and 90 m, respectively with sophisticated geometry. It is considerably difficult to install heavy and large subsea structures, especially in South China Sea where severe environmental conditions are common. In addition, deepwater deployment may alter natural frequency of the hoisting system and the altered frequency may be close to possible environmental conditions. To deal with the above two issues, traditionally, engineers need to carry out series of complicated numerical analyses which are on case basis and significantly time-consuming. Existing studies focus on the optimization on analysis techniques by conducting laboratory testing and numerical simulations. However, easy-to-use guidance on massive subsea structure installation are somewhat limited. The studies presented in this paper aim to achieve a simplified guidance which can briefly screen the cases subject to axial resonance and provide visible correlations between hoisting system integrity and key installation parameters.