Pipe Walking-Lateral Buckling Interaction

Subsea pipelines are increasingly being required to operate at high temperatures and pressures. It is usual for lateral buckling to occur for pipe exposed on even seabed. In engineering the temperature along pipeline is nonlinear, and then with start-up/shut-down cycles pipe walking will take place. Pipe walking is a phenomenon in which start-up/shut-down cycles cause a ratcheting response in the pipeline axial displacement. A challenge for high temperature pipelines is the control of pipeline walking. In this paper pipeline walking of short straight pipeline and the interaction of pipe lateral buckling and the pipeline walking phenomenon are studied. Based on nonlinear finite element method pipeline exposed on even seabed is built. Effect of axial friction force, pressure cycling, and lateral buckling are all included. Analysis show that lateral buckling of pipeline and pressure cycling have beneficial on pipe walking, however pipe walking is increased with axial friction force increasing.