Guidelines for free spanning pipelines: The GUDESP Project

The aim of the GTJDESP Project is to develop Guidelines for the design of free-spanning sealines. The Guideline is based on a unified approach for the determination of flow induced vibrations and associated load conditions on the free span. The flow induced vibrations are primarily assessed through proper scaling of existing experimental data made available for the project. Further the Guideline includes classification of the free spans and specifies the requirements to the structural modeling. The paper gives a brief description of the project and discuss the major topics regarding free span assessment as proposed by the Guideline.