Prototyping and testing of composite riser joints for deepwater application

Abstract

The high strength to weight ratio, good corrosion resistance, and excellent fatigue property make carbon fiber-reinforced plastics a competitive material solution to replace steel in deepwater riser application. In this work, scaled-down composite riser joints were fabricated using a filament-winding machine. The prototypes comprise several carbon fiberreinforced plastic layers wound over an aluminum liner. They consist of a middle tubular section and two metalcomposite interface end fittings for the transfer of load between joints. A series of mechanical tests, including tension and combined tension-bending loading tests were performed to characterize their structural capacity and evaluate the improvement in performance over a purely metallic mandrel. In addition, finite element analyses incorporating elasticplastic properties of the metallic liner, interfacial failure, and complex carbon fiber-reinforced plastics failure modes were carried out. The numerical predictions are in good agreement with the experimental measurements. The experimentally verified FE framework was then extended to design and analyze a full-scale composite riser model for performance prediction to accelerate the application of composite risers by shortening product development cycle and reducing prototyping costs.

Composite risers for deep waters using a numerical modelling approach

“…Current optimized designs are presented in literature (Jha et al 2016;Teófilo et al 2013;Wang et al 2016;Teófilo et al 2010). Some prototype designs of composite risers are also presented in some literature (Andersen et al 1998;Chen et al 2016).…”

Effects of Different Design Parameters on the Vortex Induced Vibration of FRP Composite Risers Using Grey Relational Analysis

“…n=1 Z 01 (n) = 0.755 r 02(E bending ) = 9 n=1 Z 02 (n) = 0.753 r 03(L/D outer ) = 9 n=1 Z 03 (n) = 0.794 r 04(Tension Force) = 9 n=1 Z 04 (n) = 0.791 r 05(Velocity) = 9 n=1 Z 05 (n) = 0.807 (12) From Equation 12, r 05(Velocity) > r 03(L/D outer ) > r 04(Tension Force) > r 01(E tension ) > r 02(E bending ) . According to the GRG value for each parameter, the flow velocity has the largest effect, then the L/D outer , followed by the tension force, and after that, the E tension , and E bending .…”

“…In addition to these joint industry projects, which focused mainly on the concept of feasibility and mechanical tests, the responses and performance under environmental and functional loads of composite risers were also studied. Chen et al proved the performance improvement of composite risers over a pure metallic mandrel using a scaled-down test [12]. For the global response of composite risers, the maximum bending moment occurs on the bottom, followed by the joints at the sea surface and the tension force decreases with an increasing water depth in general [13][14][15][16][17][18].…”

Comparative Study of Vortex-Induced Vibration of FRP Composite Risers with Large Length to Diameter Ratio Under Different Environmental Situations

“…Besides the research of mechanical properties of FRP composite materials in seawater, the responses and performances, including load distributions, fatigue, and vortex-induced vibrations (VIVs) of composite risers under environmental and functional loads have also been investigated [12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25]. The improvement of composite risers in performance over a pure metallic mandrel had been proved through a scaled-down test [23]. For the global response, the tension force decreases with an increasing water depth and the maximum bending moment occurs on the bottom, followed by the joints at the sea surface in general [12][13][14]16,20,22].…”