Mode jumping in the lateral buckling of subsea pipelines

Unburied subsea pipelines under high-temperature conditions tend to relieve their axial compressive stress by forming localised lateral buckles. This phenomenon is traditionally studied under the assumption of a specific lateral deflection profile (mode) consisting of a fixed number of lobes. We study lateral thermal buckling as a genuinely localised buckling phenomenon by applying homoclinic (‘flat’) boundary conditions. By not having to assume a particular buckling mode we are in a position to study transitions between these traditional modes in typical loading sequences. For the lateral resistance we take a realistic nonlinear pipe-soil interaction model for partially embedded pipelines. We find that for soils with appreciable breakout resistance, i.e., nonmonotonicity of the lateral resistance characteristic, sudden jumps between modes may occur. We consider both symmetric and antisymmetric solutions. The latter turn out to require much higher temperature differences between pipe and environment for the jumps to be induced. We carry out a parameter study on the effect of various pipe-soil interaction parameters on this mode jumping. Away from the jumps post-buckling solutions are reasonably well described by the traditional modes whose analytical expressions may be used during preliminary design