Constrained problems in riser and pipeline mechanics.

Principles of substructuring, condensation, and contact mechanics are used to develop new, finite element, large deformation, nonlinear static and dynamic algorithms, addressing two contact problems in riser and pipeline mechanics; namely the problems of nonintegral production riser and pipelaying. In the former problem, substructuring is used to decompose that complex structure into substructures. In the condensation phase, the equilibrium of the connectors along with the geometric constraints imposed by them are used to derive the connector forces. Then the solution for each component-riser is derived sequentially. In the latter problem, principles of contact mechanics are used to identify contact regions. Then, condensation is used to compute the reaction forces imposed by the constraints. The developed solution algorithms, for the two problems are implemented into computer codes. These are verified by studying simple cases and then used to perform a design analysis. For the nonintegral production riser problem the effects of different parameters involved in the design of the bundle are studied, namely, the length of the bundle, the number of connectors used, the distance between component-risers, and the number of finite elements used in the analysis. For the pipelaying problem, moderate and deep water stinger pipelaying applications are studied, and the effect of the stinger design is examined. For deep water the alternative approach of J-type pipelaying is also analyzed. For the best designs resulting from the static analysis, a dynanic simulation in time is performed, and several conclusions are obtained.PhDOcean engineeringMechanical engineeringPetroleum engineeringUniversity of Michiganhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/162380/1/9001732.pd