Fatigue performance of drilling risers

Drilling risers are vertical pipes typically used with subsea blowout preventers (BOP), well conductors and various casings and tubing elements deployed from mobile drilling units for drilling of subsea wells. Drilling risers are subject to wave induced motions from vessel fluctuations, direct wave actions and vortex-induced vibrations (VIV) due to current flow passing the riser. These motions are transferred down the riser to the wellhead, conductor and casing system and accumulate fatigue damage at critical spots. Fatigue assessment of riser-well system is an important aspect of the design and integrity assurance of deepwater drilling riser assemblies. The magnitude of the stress variations and consequently the fatigue damage significantly depends on the lateral soil reactions along the conductor. However, coupling non-linear soil models with other structural elements to simulate interactions is quite challenging and time consuming due to the large number of the equations that need to be solved simultaneously. TO BE CONT’D

Faculty Supervisor:

Hodjat Shiri

Student:

Partner:

Universidade de São Paulo

Discipline:

Engineering

Sector:

Education

University:

Memorial University of Newfoundland

Program: