Application of analytical model in the prediction of dynamic responses and fatigue damage of flexible risers: Part I – Improvement of analytical model considering shear deformation and varying tension effects

Flexible risers have been widely utilized for the transfer of oil and gas products from a well to production units. The components of flexible risers, unlike steel risers, experience complex contact phenomena during bending. The contact between helical wires and adjacent layers especially causes a significant level of bending nonlinearity, making it hard to estimate the structural responses. Accordingly, a large-scale dynamic analysis of flexible risers usually involves an analytical model that predicts the bending moment and axial stress of helical wires based on theoretical approaches. The analytical model consists of an axis-symmetrical model and a bending model. Among them, the bending model plays a critical role in the prediction of the bending responses of flexible risers. The conventional bending models usually neglect the shear deformation of internal layers and continuity of sliding force, which leads to a significant error of analysis. Furthermore, the previous bending models assume that the contact pressure on helical wires is constant during bending. In real operating conditions, however, most flexible risers experience a considerable change of tension that governs the slip of helical wires. Hence, the current study presents a new dynamic analysis method for flexible risers. The suggested analytical model improves the bending model based on an accurate estimation of the internal strain field considering the shear deformation and continuous sliding force. Also, this study proposes a stiffness update method to reflect the effect of varying tension in the dynamic analysis. The presented method updates the bending property of flexible risers considering the continuous change of the contact pressure from varying tension. For the validation of suggested method, the current study carries out numerical simulations with a pure bending and varying tension for the internal diameter 7 inches flexible risers. It is identified that the suggested analytical model provides accurate analysis results. Moreover, it is found that the effect of varying tension gives a significant impact on the bending behavior of flexible risers by changing the slip condition of helical wires. Part I of this series of papers describes the detailed formulation method for the analytical model and with some verification examples. The suggested analytical model is expanded to the large-scale dynamic analysis in Part II for the investigation of the effect of shear deformation and varying tension.