Nonlinear contact between pipeline’s outer wall and slip-on buckle arrestor’s inner wall during buckling process

Abstract

In order to theoretically study the buckle propagation of subsea pipelines with slip-on buckle arrestors, a two-dimensional ring model was set up to represent the pipeline and a nonlinear spring model was adopted to simulate the contact between pipeline’s inner walls and between pipeline’s outer wall and slip-on buckle arrestor’s inner wall during buckle propagation. In addition, some reverse springs are added to prevent the wall of left and right sides separating from the inner wall of slip-on buckle arrestors. Considering large deformation kinematics relations and the elastic-plastic constitutive relation of material, balance equations were established with the principle of virtual work. The variation of external pressure with respect to the cross-sectional area of pipelines was analyzed, and the lower bound of the crossover pressure of slip-on buckle arrestors was calculated based on Maxwell’s energy balance method. By comparing the theoretical results with experiment and finite element numerical simulation, the theoretical method is proved to be correct and reliable.