North of England Evening Meeting – Tubulars in Subsea Applications

Effect of JCO-E pipe manufacturing process on deep-offshore pipeline structural performance

Presented by: Spyros A. Karamanos, Professor and Chair of Structural Engineering, School of Engineering, The University of Edinburgh, Scotland, UK

Large-diameter thick-walled steel pipes during their installation in deep-water are subjected to external pressure, which may trigger structural instability due to excessive pipe ovalization, with catastrophic effects. The resistance of offshore pipes against this instability depends on imperfections and residual stresses, introduced by the line pipe manufacturing process. In this presentation, the JCO-E pipe manufacturing process, a commonly adopted process for producing large-diameter thick offshore pipes  is presented. It examines the effect of JCO-E line pipe manufacturing process on the external pressure resistance of the pipes, candidates for deep-water applications. A quasi-two-dimensional structural finite element model is employed, together with a coupled thermo-mechanical model for simulating the welding process.  Spyros  A. Karamanos  is Professor and Chair of Structural Engineering, at the School of Engineering, The University of Edinburgh, since August 2016. He teaches courses in Structural Mechanics and Finite Element Methods. He is also a Professor of Computational Structural Mechanics at the University of Thessaly, Greece, at the Department of Mechanical Engineering.

Spyros specializes in structural mechanics and integrity of energy infrastructure systems, withemphasis on steel structures. His research interests focus on buckling and fatigue of pipelines and offshore structures, mainly tubular components and systems, using computational (finite element) methods, and experimental testing. His research has been funded primarily by European research projects, with the participation of European steel and pipeline industry. He has published more than 180 papers in refereed journals and conference proceedings.

Key aspects of umbilical design and manufacturing

Presented by: Steven Frazer, Product Design Manager, Technip Umbilical Ltd., Newcastle upon Tyne, UK

Umbilical technology creates the link between topside and subsea equipment, offering Control, Power, Communication and Injection functionality; as a result, the umbilical product comes in multiple forms and has key considerations which steer the design of the product to ensure it is fit for purpose throughout the product lifecycle.

This talk will outline the different umbilical products, their function, manufacturing techniques and the key drivers and challenges faced during the design and engineering phases, with focus placed on the Steel Tube Umbilicals.

Steven Frazer is a Chartered Mechanical Engineer with over 10 years’ experience in the umbilical technology. He graduated from Northumbria University with a first class degree in mechanical engineering before taking the role as development engineer at TUL (or DUCO at the time). He spent the first 7 years of his career in R&D working on the full range of umbilical technologies while also studying for his master in subsea engineering and management at Newcastle University. Three years ago, he moved into the project execution side of the business, taking the post of Product Design Manager responsible for Engineering on all TUL projects.

Registration & refreshments 18:00, AGM & talk 18:30, followed by networking