Numerical analysis of vortex-induced vibration on a flexible cantilever riser for deep-sea mining system

Abstract

The flexible cantilever riser, as a special form of the marine riser, can be encountered in a deep-sea mining system, where the bottom of the long vertical lifting pipeline is connected with the intermediate warehouse. The main objective of this paper is to investigate the effects of the bottom weight caused by the intermediate warehouse and the flow speed on the dynamic responses of the cantilever pipeline. A quasi-3D coupling algorithm based on the discrete vortex method and finite element method is employed to calculate the unsteady hydrodynamic forces and vortex-induced vibrations of this pipeline in the time domain, respectively. We first simulate the VIV of a long flexible riser with two fixed ends in a stepped flow to validate the feasibility of the present method. Then, systematic simulations of cross-flow VIV of the cantilever riser are carried out under a wide range of bottom weights and different current speeds. The number of the vibration mode shows the decreasing tendency with the increase of the bottom weight. In a certain range of the weight, the number of the dominant mode remains unchanged, while the vibration amplitude declines with increasing weight. An amplitude jump phenomenon can be observed when the transition of the dominant mode in two contiguous mode clusters occurs. Moreover, the higher-order modes are excited with the increase of the current speed.