Numerical Analysis of Mechanical Behaviors of Composite Tensile Armored Flexible Risers in Deep-Sea Oil and Gas

Abstract

As oil and natural gas production continue to go deeper into the ocean, the flexible riser, as a connection to the surface of the marine oil and gas channel, will confront greater problems in its practical application. Composite materials are being considered to replace steel in the unbonded flexible pipe in order to successfully meet the lightweight and high-strength criteria of ultra-deep-water oil and gas production. The carbon-fiber-reinforced material substitutes the steel of the tensile armor layer with a greater strength-to-weight ratio. However, its performance in deep-water environments is less researched. To investigate the mechanical response of a carbon fiber composite flexible riser in the deep sea, this study establishes the ABAQUS quasi-static analysis model to predict the performance of the pipe. Considering the special constitutive relations of composite materials, the tensile stiffness of steel pipe and carbon fiber-reinforced composite flexible pipe are predicted. The results show that the replacement of steel strips with carbon fiber can provide 85.06% tensile stiffness while reducing the weight by 77.7%. Moreover, carbon-fiber-reinforced strips have a lower radial modulus, which may not be sufficient to cause buckling under axial compression, so the instability of the carbon fiber composite armor layer under axial compression is further studied in this paper; furthermore, the characteristics of axial stiffness are analyzed, and the effects of the friction coefficient and hydrostatic pressure are discussed.