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Thermoplastic composite pipes (TCP) is a fully bonded pipe structure with a solid wall construction constituted from a single polymer material reinforced with embedded (melt-fused) fibre reinforcements. DNV GL published in December 2015, the new Recommended Practice DNVGL-RP-F119, intended for the design and qualification of Thermoplastic Composite Pipes in offshore applications. This paper describes Airborne Oil & Gas approach to qualifying its ultradeep water TCP products to the new standard. Because of its intrinsic properties, including being lightweight, spoolable, and collapse and corrosion resistant, TCP is very much suited for riser applications. After applications such as a 1" high pressure methanol injection jumper in the North Sea, a 6" flowline for hydrocarbon conveyance off the coast of Sarawak, Malaysia, and a 2" gas lift line in the North Sea, Airborne Oil & Gas has now started the development of TCP for high pressure high temperature dynamic production riser applications. A typical offshore Brazil pre-salt field ultradeep water design premise has been used to assess the feasibility of 6" and 8" free hanging TCP Risers. This was done in close cooperation with a major operator in Brazil and SURF contractor. Global, installation and local analyses of the TCP Riser system have shown the feasibility of installation as well as operations in a free hanging catenary configuration throughout the 30 years’ service life. After technical feasibility had been demonstrated, a detailed business case study was performed in order to quantify the potential CAPEX savings that TCP technology can bring compared to the low lazy wave systems currently installed in pre-salt fields, offshore Brazil. Considerable savings are expected, especially on pipe procurement costs. Further savings on OPEX are also expected and are related to corrosion and biocide inhibition operations.

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Herein, we describe the design and testing of a stereoscopic PIV system uniquely adapted for the high pressure environment of the Princeton Superpipe. The Superpipe is a recirculating pipe facility that utilizes compressed air as the working fluid to attain very high Reynolds numbers. Commercial piping is used as the pressure vessel to hold pressure up to 220 bars, and a test pipe is enclosed inside with a development length of 200 diameters that ensures a fully-developed condition at the test section. The highest achievable Reynolds number (based on the bulk velocity and the pipe diameter) is 35×106, corresponding to a maximum friction Reynolds number of 5×105. The unprecedented range of Reynolds number has enabled a number of new insights in the behavior of high Reynolds number wall-bounded turbulence (Zagarola and Smits, 1998; Hultmark et al., 2013). However, past measurements in the Superpipe have been primarily restricted to single-component, one- or two-point statistics of fully-developed pipe flows. The present work aims to expand the capability of the Superpipe to study turbulent coherent structures and multi-point statistics by means of a new stereoscopic PIV system. The high pressure environment and the confined space inside the pressure vessel pose challenges to both imaging and seeding, the solutions to which will be discussed.

No abstract