Assessment of Hydrostatic Collapse of Submarine Pipelines: The Classical Approach Revisited

In order to improve the assessment of the hydrostatic collapse of deepwater pipelines a new method named, RCA (Renewed Classical Approach) method, was developed. The development of this method, which is a modified version of the DNV method, was based on the results of several nonlinear Finite Element (FE) analyses.In this paper the development of the RCA method is presented. Initially an overview of the classical approach is presented. Then two assessment methods are presented (the DNV method and the RCA method) and the FE modeling is described. Finally the collapse pressures predicted by the assessment methods are compared with those predicted by the FE models.Copyright © 2012 by ASME