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Stability of subsea pipelines during large storms

Stability of subsea pipelines during large storms
Stability of subsea pipelines during large storms

On-bottom stability design of subsea pipelines transporting hydrocarbons is important to ensure safety and reliability but is challenging to achieve in the onerous metocean (meteorological and oceanographic) conditions typical of large storms (such as tropical cyclones, hurricanes or typhoons). This challenge is increased by the fact that industry design guidelines presently give no guidance on how to incorporate the potential benefits of seabed mobility, which can lead to lowering and self-burial of the pipeline on a sandy seabed. In this paper, we demonstrate recent advances in experimental modelling of pipeline scour and present results investigating how pipeline stability can change in a large storm. An emphasis is placed on the initial development of the storm, where scour is inevitable on an erodible bed as the storm velocities build up to peak conditions. During this initial development, we compare the rate at which peak near-bed velocities increase in a large storm (typically less than 10-3ms-2) to the rate at which a pipeline scours and subsequently lowers (which is dependent not only on the storm velocities, but also on the mechanism of lowering and the pipeline properties). We show that the relative magnitude of these rates influences pipeline embedment during a storm and the stability of the pipeline.

Offshore hydrodynamics, Pipeline stability, Scour
1364-503X
1-22
Draper, Scott
efe46b7d-3989-403b-8b19-0b17dd54194f
An, Hongwei
53542f2c-e294-4e26-a581-344e646c72e6
Cheng, Liang
c4c2801b-0056-4116-8b10-33a232d2e376
White, David J.
a986033d-d26d-4419-a3f3-20dc54efce93
Griffiths, Terry
24b3e648-f03d-4597-a69b-c2f90c2f70eb
Draper, Scott
efe46b7d-3989-403b-8b19-0b17dd54194f
An, Hongwei
53542f2c-e294-4e26-a581-344e646c72e6
Cheng, Liang
c4c2801b-0056-4116-8b10-33a232d2e376
White, David J.
a986033d-d26d-4419-a3f3-20dc54efce93
Griffiths, Terry
24b3e648-f03d-4597-a69b-c2f90c2f70eb

Draper, Scott, An, Hongwei, Cheng, Liang, White, David J. and Griffiths, Terry (2015) Stability of subsea pipelines during large storms. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences, 373 (2033), 1-22. (doi:10.1098/rsta.2014.0106).

Record type: Article

Abstract

On-bottom stability design of subsea pipelines transporting hydrocarbons is important to ensure safety and reliability but is challenging to achieve in the onerous metocean (meteorological and oceanographic) conditions typical of large storms (such as tropical cyclones, hurricanes or typhoons). This challenge is increased by the fact that industry design guidelines presently give no guidance on how to incorporate the potential benefits of seabed mobility, which can lead to lowering and self-burial of the pipeline on a sandy seabed. In this paper, we demonstrate recent advances in experimental modelling of pipeline scour and present results investigating how pipeline stability can change in a large storm. An emphasis is placed on the initial development of the storm, where scour is inevitable on an erodible bed as the storm velocities build up to peak conditions. During this initial development, we compare the rate at which peak near-bed velocities increase in a large storm (typically less than 10-3ms-2) to the rate at which a pipeline scours and subsequently lowers (which is dependent not only on the storm velocities, but also on the mechanism of lowering and the pipeline properties). We show that the relative magnitude of these rates influences pipeline embedment during a storm and the stability of the pipeline.

Other
Draper et al 2014 AM - Accepted Manuscript
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More information

e-pub ahead of print date: 15 December 2014
Published date: 28 January 2015
Keywords: Offshore hydrodynamics, Pipeline stability, Scour

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 419548
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/419548
ISSN: 1364-503X
PURE UUID: 1c8a0f79-6cec-47e8-816a-432177963de6
ORCID for David J. White: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0002-2968-582X

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Date deposited: 13 Apr 2018 16:30
Last modified: 06 Jun 2024 02:00

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Contributors

Author: Scott Draper
Author: Hongwei An
Author: Liang Cheng
Author: David J. White ORCID iD
Author: Terry Griffiths

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