Analysis of tensile response of flexible pipe with ovalization under hydrostatic pressure

Abstract

Flexible pipes play an important role in the transportation of oil and gas from the seabed to floating production units. They are also employed to inject water or gas into offshore wells. In deep-sea oil and gas extraction, flexible pipes must be able to withstand very high tensile and hydrostatic pressures. In this paper, an equivalent method is used to represent the complex carcass layer and the pressure armor layer as a regular cylinder, and then a numerical model of a 2.5" flexible pipe was developed and verified by experiment. A tensile analysis of flexible pipes with different degrees of initial ovalization indicated that ovalization of 0–1% does not affect the tensile rigidity, but increasing the ovalization creates an uneven load and stress concentration on the tensile armor layer. When a flexible pipe is subjected to hydrostatic pressure, the outer pressure increases the tensile rigidity of the flexible pipe more than the annular pressure, but the reduction of the ultimate tensile load is clear. A high annular pressure can cause the collapse of the carcass layer.