Analysis of Marine Risers Subjected to Shoal/Deep Water in the Installation Process

Abstract

The dynamics of the installation process of marine risers subjected to shoal/deep seawater is studied. The riser is assumed to be a cantilevered Euler‒Bernoulli beam. The upper end of the riser is clamped on the vessel or the drilling platform. The lower end of the riser is connected to the Blowout Preventer Stack (BOPs) and Lower Marine Risers Package (LMRP). The lateral fluid forces induced by the sea wave and sea current are introduced into the governing equations of motion. The lateral displacement and stress distributions of the riser are obtained by solving the governing equation of the riser via Galerkin’s discretisation scheme and a fourth-order Runge‒Kutta algorithm. The results indicate that the riser exhibits different behaviours under various depths because of the different distributions of the flow velocity ranging from the sea surface to the seabed. In the case of shoal water, the dynamics of the riser are dominated by the sea wave, while in the case of deep water it is affected mainly by the sea current velocity and sea surface wind velocity.