On the Whistling of Corrugated Pipes With Narrow Cavities

Author(s):  
Joachim Golliard ◽  
Stefan Belfroid ◽  
Nestor Gonzalez Diez ◽  
Erik Bendiksen ◽  
Casper Frimodt

Pipes with a corrugated inner surface, as used in flexible pipes for gas production and transport, can be subject to Flow-Induced Pulsations when the flow velocities are higher than a certain onset velocity. The onset velocity for classical corrugated pipes can be predicted on basis of the geometry of the corrugations, the operational conditions and the geometry of the topside and subsea piping. A newly developed inner carcass design for flexible pipes features smaller corrugation cavities. The effect of narrow cavities on the whistling of corrugated cavities is evaluated. In this paper, small-scale tests performed on corrugated tubes are reported. The tested geometries include both “classical” profiles, similar to the inner profile of agraff flexible risers, and profiles with less typical variations, such as deeper and narrower cavities. These tests were performed in order to evaluate the validity of a prediction model for the onset of pulsations, for corrugated pipes with these kinds of atypical variations. The experimental results show that the validity of the model remains reasonable, except when the cavities are very narrow. In this case, the model becomes overly conservative. The deviation is attributed to the momentum thickness of the boundary layer, which is too large compared to the cavity width. In this case, any instability of the shear layer is destroyed, which prevents whistling. Furthermore, the shift towards higher frequencies of the acoustic source term due to narrower cavities, and the possible coupling with higher acoustic modes, are considered.

Author(s):  
Joachim Golliard ◽  
Stefan Belfroid ◽  
Erik Bendiksen ◽  
Casper Frimodt

Pipes for gas production and transport with a corrugated inner surface, as used in flexible pipes, can be subject to Flow-Induced Pulsations when the flow velocity is larger than a certain velocity. This onset velocity is dependent on the geometry of the corrugations, the operational conditions and the geometry of the topside and subsea piping. In this paper, small-scale tests performed on corrugated tubes are reported. The tested geometries include both “classical” profiles, similar to the inner profile of agraff flexible risers, and profiles with less typical variations, such as narrower and/or deeper cavities, or irregular pitch. These tests were performed in order to evaluate the validity of a prediction model developed earlier for the onset of pulsations, for corrugated pipes with these kinds of atypical variations, which are found on a new type of carcass designs. The mechanism of Flow-Induced Pulsations in corrugated pipes is discussed, as well as the principle of the prediction model. The experimental results show that the validity of the model remains reasonable in most cases, except when the cavities are very narrow. In this case, the model becomes overly conservative. This limitation can be attributed to the fact that, for very narrow cavities, the cavity opening becomes too small compared to the boundary-layer momentum thickness, effectively destroying any instability of the shear layer. Furthermore, the shift towards higher frequencies of the acoustic source term due to narrower cavities, and the possible coupling with higher acoustic modes, is considered. The results of the analysis are used to evaluate the onset velocity and whistling behavior of a newly developed carcass design of flexible risers. A previous analysis has indicated that the particular geometry profile of the new design improves the whistling behavior by pushing the onset velocity outside the typical operational envelope of flexible risers. The analysis confirms that the new design will be less prone to whistling than flexible risers with classical agraff carcasses.


Author(s):  
Victor Pinheiro Pupo Nogueira ◽  
Theodoro Antoun Netto

Offshore oil and gas production worldwide constantly moves to deeper water with increasing flexible pipe operational severity. Failure mechanisms, i.e., sequences of events which may lead to failure, are nowadays more likely to happen. Therefore, it is important to develop reliable numerical tools that can be used in the design stages or during service-life to assess the structural integrity of pipes under specific operational conditions. This work presents a methodology to develop simple finite element models capable to reproduce the behavior of structural layers of flexible pipes under hydrostatic pressure up to the onset of collapse. The models use beam elements and include contact between layers, nonlinear kinematics and material behavior. Different configurations were analyzed: carcass-only, and carcass plus pressure armor with dry and wet annular. The dependability of the numerical models is assessed in light of experimental tests on flexible pipes with 4 and 8 inch nominal internal diameters. Relevant geometric parameters and material properties of each specimen were measured and subsequently used in the models to reproduce the physical experiments. The metallic inner carcass and pressure armor layer manufacturing processes cause a high degree of stress-induced material anisotropy. Due to the inherent difficulty to determine the non-homogeneous elastic-plastic material behavior of the wires’ cross-sections, a novel alternative method was used to estimate their average stress-strain curves up to moderate strains (2%). Good correlation was obtained between experimental and numerical results. The applied methodology proved to be simple and yet efficient and reliable for the estimation of the collapse pressure of flexible pipes.


Author(s):  
S. P. C. Belfroid ◽  
J. Golliard ◽  
O. Vijlbrief

Pipes with a corrugated inner surface, as used in flexible pipes for gas production and transport, can generate a high amplitude tonal sound (singing). Small quantities of liquid can result in a significant amplitude reduction or total mitigation of this sound production. To evaluate different potential mechanisms, liquid injection tests were done in both a horizontal and vertical small scale (49 mm) setup including high speed camera recordings using a transparent corrugated section. The singing amplitude decreased linearly with the liquid injection rate for both orientations, although the effect in the vertical setup was even faster. Liquid injection resulted also in higher onset velocities. The video recordings showed partially filled corrugations. For horizontal corrugations, liquid crept upward in the corrugations. In the vertical test, liquid accumulated at the upward edge with intermitted liquid spill over to downstream corrugations. The liquid fill up did not change significantly with higher liquid loads. Taking the fill-up grade and additional damping into account, a match could be made between the measured singing amplitude and a predicted singing amplitude as function of liquid rate. However, no model has been found to predict the liquid fill-up yet.


Author(s):  
S. P. C. Belfroid ◽  
H. J. C. Korst ◽  
K. G. Nielsen ◽  
E. Bendiksen

The flow of fluid over the inner surface of rough bore flexible pipes may create vortex induced pulsations. For gas risers these pulsations can in some cases be the source of a high amplitude tonal sound. This phenomenon is in the industry referred to as “singing risers”. Under certain circumstances these pulsations can result in large structural vibrations with potential fatigue failure of the connected topside or subsea pipe systems. The singing behavior is dependent on the operating conditions such as product density and viscosity as well as the piping layout of the topside and subsea piping. However, the most important factor is the geometry of the corrugations. In traditional designs the carcass is made from a folded metallic strip. NKT Flexibles has developed a novel approach to carcass manufacturing originally intended for deep and ultra deepwater applications, wherein the carcass is made of helically wound wires rather than a folded strip. Although the main focus for this development was to devise a carcass of superior collapse strength compared to conventional systems, the new carcass design provides a very smooth inner surface, thus mitigating vortex formation which will reduce or eliminate the formation of flow induced pulsations. The susceptibility to singing of the new carcass design is compared to that of a traditional carcass design. This includes the onset of the singing and the flow pressure drop. Due to the much smaller cavities in the new design, the singing tendency is shown to be significantly reduced. In particular, the expected onset velocity is 5–9 times that of a classic rough bore design with 20%–50% of the amplitude. An additional benefit of the new design is that the pressure drop for the pipe is close to that of a smooth bore pipe. Therefore, it is expected that for many applications, the new design will not lead to the generation of high amplitude tonal noise within the desired operating envelope.


Author(s):  
Sérgio R. K. Morikawa ◽  
Arthur M. B. Braga ◽  
Claudio S. Camerini ◽  
Carla C. Kato ◽  
Roberth A. Llerena ◽  
...  

Petrobras oil and gas production in the deep and ultra deepwater fields in Campos Basin and other provinces off the Brazilian coast heavily relies on flexible pipes. Maximizing the availability and reliability of an extensive offshore pipeline network poses innumerous challenges to the Company, which is steadily moving towards a condition based approach to maintenance of their flexible risers. In this context, Petrobras, in cooperation with its academic partners, has launched a comprehensive R&D program named MONFLEX, focusing on novel techniques for structural monitoring of flexible risers. Years of field experience have demonstrated that one of the most frequent failure modes of flexible pipes is the sequential rupture of wires in their tensile armor layers [1]. The MONFLEX Program has explored a range of different technologies in order to timely detect and monitor the growth of this class of progressive structural damage. Some of the proposed approaches have relied on video cameras pointed towards fixedly mounted targets on the riser outer sheath, vibration and acoustic methods, these in a wide frequency range, and techniques based on fiber optic strain sensors. All three have been experimentally deployed in the field and are currently being evaluated. Among those, fiber optic monitoring is the one that has shown the better promise of becoming the chosen method for detecting wire ruptures in the riser’s armor layers. The fiber optic based monitoring system developed in the MONFLEX R&D Program has been named MODA, which, in Portuguese, stands for Direct Wire Optical Monitoring. The MODA system consists in instrumenting all the wires of the riser’s external tensile armor layer with fiber Bragg grating strain sensors. In flexible risers already in operation, a window in the polymeric outer sheath of the pipe is temporarily opened in order to allow the sensors installation, and then repaired with a protective, anticorrosive layer. Even though in MODA the strain sensors are installed in the external armor layer, full scale laboratory tests have demonstrated that the algorithm employed to treat and analyze the real time data provided by the system is capable of instantaneously detecting ruptures of wires either in the external or internal layers of the tensile armor. The proposed contribution will report the later results of extensive laboratory tests and field trials performed with the MODA system.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thierry Dequin ◽  
Clark Weldon ◽  
Matthew Hense

Abstract Flexible risers are regularly used to produce oil and gas in subsea production systems and by nature interconnect the subsea production system to the floating or fixed host facilities. Unbonded flexible pipes are made of a combination of metallic and non-metallic layers, each layer being individually terminated at each extremity by complex end fittings. Mostly submerged in seawater, the metallic parts require careful material selection and cathodic protection (CP) to survive the expected service life. Design engineers must determine whether the flexible pipe risers should be electrically connected to the host in order to receive cathodic protection current or be electrically isolated. If the host structure is equipped with a sacrificial anode system, then electrical continuity between the riser and the host structure is generally preferred. The exception is often when the riser and host structure are operated by separate organizations, in which case electrical isolation may be preferred simply to provide delineation of ownership between the two CP systems. The paper discusses these interface issues between hull and subsea where the hull is equipped with an impressed current cathodic protection (ICCP) system, and provides guidance for addressing them during flexible pipe CP design, operation, and monitoring. Specifically, CP design philosophies for flexible risers will be addressed with respect to manufacturing, installation and interface with the host structure’s Impressed Current Cathodic Protection (ICCP) system. The discussion will emphasize the importance of early coordination between the host structure ICCP system designers and the subsea SACP system designers, and will include recommendations for CP system computer modeling, CP system design operation and CP system monitoring. One of the challenges is to understand what to consider for the exposed surfaces in the flexible pipes and its multiple layers, and also the evaluation of the linear resistance of each riser segment. The linear resistance of the riser is a major determinant with respect to potential attenuation, which in turn largely determines the extent of current drain between the subsea sacrificial anode system and the hull ICCP system. To model the flexible riser CP system behavior for self-protection, linear resistance may be maximized, however the use of a realistic linear resistance is recommended for evaluation of the interaction between the host structure and subsea system. Realistic flexible linear resistance would also reduce conservatism in the CP design, potentially save time during the offshore campaign by reducing anode quantities, and also providing correct evaluation of drain current and stray currents.


2015 ◽  
Vol 137 (5) ◽  
Author(s):  
Kyung Sung Kim ◽  
Moo-Hyun Kim ◽  
Jong-Chun Park

For oil/gas production/processing platforms, multiple liquid layers can exist and their respective sloshing motions can also affect operational effectiveness or platform performance. To numerically simulate those problems, a new multiliquid moving particle simulation (MPS) method is developed. In particular, to better simulate the relevant physics, robust self-buoyancy model, interface searching model, and surface-tension model are developed. The developed multiliquid MPS method is validated by comparisons against experiment in which three-liquid-sloshing experiment and the corresponding linear potential theory are given. The validated multiliquid MPS program is subsequently coupled with a vessel-motion program in time domain to investigate their dynamic-coupling effects. In case of multiple liquid layers, there exists a variety of sloshing natural frequencies for respective interfaces, so the relevant physics can be much more complicated compared with the single-liquid-tank case. The simulation program can also reproduce the detailed small-scale interface phenomenon called Kelvin–Helmholtz instability. The numerical simulations also show that properly designed liquid cargo tank can also function as a beneficial antirolling device.


2018 ◽  
Vol 78 (6) ◽  
pp. 1304-1311 ◽  
Author(s):  
I. Mishima ◽  
M. Hama ◽  
Y. Tabata ◽  
J. Nakajima

Abstract Small-scale wastewater treatment plants (SWTPs), called Johkasou, are widely used as decentralized and individual wastewater treatment systems in sparsely populated areas in Japan. Even in SWTPs, nutrients should be removed to control eutrophication. An iron electrolysis method is effective to remove phosphorus chemically in SWTPs. However, it is necessary to determine the precise conditions under which phosphorus can be effectively and stably removed in full scale SWTPs for a long period. Therefore, long-term phosphorus removal from SWTPs was investigated and optimum operational conditions for phosphorus removal by iron electrolysis were analyzed in this study. Efficient phosphorus removal can be achieved for a long time by adjusting the amount of iron against the actual population equivalent. The change of the recirculation ratio had no negative effect on overall phosphorus removal. Phosphorus release to the bulk phase was prevented by the accumulated iron, which was supplied by iron electrolysis, resulting in stable phosphorus removal. The effect of environmental load reduction due to phosphorus removal by iron electrolysis was greater than the cost of power consumption for iron electrolysis.


2018 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 13-23 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gábor Nagy ◽  
Alexandra Takács ◽  
András Arnold Kállay ◽  
Dóra Mentes

One of the possible utilisation methods for organic wastes is anaerobe decomposition (fermentation). The main product of this process is biogas which is usually used for energy purposes due to its composition (mainly methane and carbon dioxide). The residual solid material after fermentation can be used as soil conditioner. Lab-scale fermentation can be carried out using the “VDI 4630 – Fermentation of organic materials Characterisation of the substrate, sampling, collection of material data, fermentation tests” standard. Based on the conditions described in the standard, a small-scale low-budget reactor system were prepared. The temperature during the holding time was controlled with water bath and the gas production was determined with fluid displacement method. A peristaltic pump was used for the recirculation of the gas to mix the base material. Furthermore, the temperatures of the environment, the water baths and the inside of each reactor was automatically registered on a data collector.


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