Buckling Properties of a Subsea Function Chamber for Oil/Gas Processing in Deep Waters

Abstract

Due to the complexity of installations and connections of subsea production equipment and the massive structures involved in a challenging environment, the failure of subsea production equipment could induce enormous loss to the safety and reliability of structures in addition to the cost of the oilfield development. One of the challenges that the subsea production structures face, as it moves to ultra-deep water and polar underwater equipment, is to design subsea shell structures capable of withstanding high external pressures. Hence, a subsea function chamber (SFC) has been lately proposed as a viable solution, which has a high level of safety and reliability, and a technique for the subsea production system. This paper presents a general and efficient buckling and collapse analysis strategy. In this work, the SFC is composed of cylindrical and hemispherical shaped steel material. Initial imperfection-based nonlinear buckling analysis has been carried out to investigate the buckling and risks associated with different thicknesses of the structure. Linear and nonlinear static buckling analyses have been carried out using ABAQUS software. By introducing the nonlinear properties of materials, the nonlinear numerical model of SFC is established. The effects of the thickness of different models and the number of stiffeners on the buckling modes are discussed. The wall thickness is calculated by the Donnell equation and Timoshenko’s classical method. It has been found that the classical solutions given by the Donnell and Timoshenko equations are more accurate for structures with larger lengths and diam. The thickness and number of stiffeners have a great influence on the ultimate buckling external pressure load of SFC structure