Controlled pipeline lateral buckling by reeling induced curvature imperfections

Expansion of pipelines installed on the sea floor due to the passage of high temperature and pressure hydrocarbons leads to lateral buckling. Interaction with a frictional sea floor can result in localization of such buckles, which must be controlled to ensure that the local bending is within acceptable limits. Periodic geometric imperfections introduced to a pipeline installed by reeling using the Residual Curvature Method are modeled and their effectiveness as expansion loops is evaluated. The imperfections are generated by allowing chosen lengths of the line to retain a small curvature by judicious action at the straightener. The model properly accounts for the complex interactions between geometric and material nonlinearities with frictional forces. It is demonstrated that as the temperature increases, the line can buckle in a snap-through manner, or can grow stably usually causing plastic deformation in its crest. The behavior is governed by the length, curvature, amplitude and periodicity of the imperfection, and by the lateral and axial frictional forces that develop. The effect of each of these variables is studied parametrically. Overall, the Residual Curvature Method is found to be a viable and effective method of controlling lateral buckling. The results provide guidance on the optimal periodicity, how to avoid snap-through buckling, and how to simultaneously minimize plastic bending.     

车身平台化开发策略研究

依托于上海汽车自主品牌的开发经验,系统分析了车身平台化开发的主要问题和关键点,阐述了车身平台化开发的基本思路.通过对国外某汽车公司车型平台前舱总成、前地板总成、后地板总成设计的研究,得出平台化设计原则,即在综合考量整车各系统要求、法规、制造工艺等前提下,以最高标准要求和限制条件来开发设计车身架构,使之在低标准要求情况下可以灵活对零部件组合配置进行更改.     

海洋平台机舱系统模块化设计与传统设计比较

模块化设计较传统设计在设计流程、设计组织及设计效益上有着诸多不同.本研究以海洋平台机舱系统为研究对象,剖析了两种设计方法下海洋平台机舱系统的设计要素、设计流程及设计组织的特点,并对其特点进行了对比分析,以期为海洋平台的模块化设计提供借鉴.     

Inhomogeneous wave load effects on a long,straight and side-anchored floating pontoon bridge

In this paper, we present a numerical study on the hydroelastic response of a 4.6 km long fjord crossing floating bridge subjected to wave loads. The bridge is straight in design and supported by 35 pontoons along its full length. To limit the response to horizontal loads, four clusters of deep water mooring lines are engaged to increase the transverse stiffness of the bridge. Owing to the very large span across the fjord, inhomogeneity in the wave field exists. This study examines the various effects of inhomogeneous wave loads on the dynamic responses of the floating bridge. These include the spatial variations of the wave direction, significant wave height and peak period as well as the coherence and correlation of waves along the entire length of the floating bridge. For the purpose of comparison, the dynamic bridge responses under homogeneous wave load cases are also studied. In addition, the effects of wave load components and short-crestedness are presented and discussed.     

Environmental lumping for efficient fatigue assessment of large-diameter monopile wind turbines

Fatigue damage is one of the governing factors for the design of offshore wind turbines. However, the full fatigue assessment is a time-consuming task. During the design process, the site-specific environmental parameters are usually condensed by a lumping process to reduce the computational effort. Preservation of fatigue damage during lumping requires an accurate consideration of the met-ocean climate and the dynamic response of the structure. Two lumping methods (time-domain and frequency-domain) have been evaluated for a monopile-based 10 MW offshore wind turbine, both based on damage-equivalent contour lines. Fatigue damage from lumped load cases was compared to full long-term fatigue assessment. The lumping methods had an accuracy of 94–98% for the total long-term fatigue damage and 90% for individual wind speed classes, for aligned wind and waves. Fatigue damage was preserved with the same accuracy levels for the whole support structure. A significant reduction of computational time (93%) was achieved compared to a full long-term fatigue assessment. For the cases with 30° and 60° wind-wave misalignment, there was a mean underestimation of approximately 10%. Variations in penetration depth did not affect the selection of the lumped sea-state parameters. This work presents a straightforward method for the selection of damage-equivalent lumped load cases, which can adequately preserve long-term fatigue damage throughout the support structure, providing considerable reduction of computational effort.     

Hysteretic damping model for laterally loaded piles

Fatigue assessment is a critical design aspect for many offshore structures. Soil-foundation interaction has a direct impact on the system dynamic response of these structures. While the stiffness of the soil-foundation interaction influences the system's natural frequency, the damping influences the amplification of the structural response to environmental excitations. This paper presents a simplified model for estimating the soil damping due to nonlinear soil response for pile foundations, which have wide applications in the offshore industry, such as for supporting jacket platforms, wind turbines and wellhead facilities. The proposed model is fundamentally linked to the damping response of the soil measured at element level therefore it offers design engineers an efficient and accurate way to estimate soil-pile interaction damping based on site-specific soil data. Approaches to include the suggested model for structural analysis are also proposed.     

Integrated design optimization of spar floating wind turbines

A linearized aero-hydro-servo-elastic floating wind turbine model is presented and used to perform integrated design optimization of the platform, tower, mooring system, and blade-pitch controller for a 10 MW spar floating wind turbine. Optimal design solutions are found using gradient-based optimization with analytic derivatives, considering both fatigue and extreme response constraints, where the objective function is a weighted combination of system cost and power quality. Optimization results show that local minima exist both in the soft-stiff and stiff-stiff range for the first tower bending mode and that a stiff-stiff tower design is needed to reach a solution that satisfies the fatigue constraints. The optimized platform has a relatively small diameter in the wave zone to limit the wave loads on the structure and an hourglass shape far below the waterline. The shape increases the restoring moment and natural frequency in pitch, which leads to improved behaviour in the low-frequency range. The importance of integrated optimization is shown in the solutions for the tower and blade-pitch control system, which are clearly affected by the simultaneous design of the platform. State-of-the-art nonlinear time-domain analyses show that the linearized model is conservative in general, but reasonably accurate in capturing trends, suggesting that the presented methodology is suitable for preliminary integrated design calculations.     

Experimental study on seismic vibration control of an offshore wind turbine with TMD considering soil liquefaction effect

Wind energy is clean and sustainable. Taiwan is establishing offshore wind farms using wind turbines in the Taiwan Strait. However, these are located in an earthquake-prone area with sandy seabed conditions. To ensure their safety and reliability, the turbines’ support structure must be protected against wind, waves, and seismic loads. Tuned mass dampers (TMDs) are commonly employed to reduce structural vibrations. A TMD is more simply incorporated into turbine structures than are other energy dissipation devices. In this study, a 1:25-scale test model with a TMD was constructed and subjected to shaking table tests to experimentally simulate the dynamic behavior of a typical 5-MW wind turbine with a jacket-type support structure and pile foundation. The scaled-down wind turbine model has a nacelle without rotating blades; therefore, the aerodynamic and rotational effects due to the rotating blades were ignored in this study. A large laminar shear box filled with saturated sandy ground was used to simulate the typical seabed conditions of Taiwanese offshore wind farms. The TMD system was designed to be tuned the first-mode frequency of the test model. Two ground accelerations, selected by considering wind farm site condition and near-fault characteristics, were used for excitation in the test. The responses of the test model with and without the TMD system were compared, and the influence of soil liquefaction on the effectiveness of TMD vibration control was addressed.     

平台运动下悬链线立管涡激振动响应特性分析

悬链线立管会在半潜平台运动带动下出现涡激振动现象,对立管疲劳寿命造成影响.借助海工结构物动力分析软件Orcaflex建立立管模型,使用Iwan-Blevins尾流振子模型进行数值模拟.通过与试验结果对比验证了该方法的可行性.同时建立实尺度悬链线立管模型,并考虑背景海流的影响,分析平台垂荡、纵荡运动下的立管涡激振动响应和疲劳损伤.研究表明,平台运动产生的非定常流场将引起悬链线立管发生涡激振动现象,并在背景洋流激励的基础上增大疲劳损伤,在立管结构实际工程设计时应予以关注.     

Experimental study of freak wave impacts on a tension-leg platform

This study investigates the freak wave impinging on a tension-leg platform through wave flume experiments. The freak waves are generated using the focused wave theory. By adjusting the wave focusing location, different incident wave scenarios at the structure location are produced. Simultaneous measurements of wave shape evolutions upon impingement, wave impact pressures on the platform deck, platform motions and tether forces are carried out for synchronized analyses of the wave kinematics/dynamics and structural responses. The variation of these parameters with the incident wave profile is studied. It is found that although applying less intensive local impact pressures as compared to the highly-breaking freak wave, the slightly-breaking or non-breaking freak wave imposes the same level of adverse effect on the platform's global stability in terms of motions and tether forces. In addition, the high-crest freak wave causes violent motions of the floating platform, which are likely to induce snap loads of large amplitude and high occurrence frequency in tethers. The published results would provide useful benchmarks for validating numerical and analytical models.