<p>The marine flexible riser is widely used in ocean oil and gas extraction, which needs to withstand environment loads (wave and current) and large offset of the floater. Therefore, the flexible riser is subjected to tension, bending, and torsion loads, which are mainly resisted by the key armor layer. The larger tension and torsion stiffness and the small bending stiffness of the cross-section of the flexible riser are required to be compliant with the ocean environment. Therefore, the innovative configurations are imperative to make sure that the flexible riser is reliable and safe during the installation and operation. The armor layer of the flexible riser is treated as the cylindrical shell composed of periodic unit cell structures initially. The optimization design is conducted through the novel implementation of the asymptotic homogenization (NIAH) method. The optimization formulation of cylindrical shell structure is proposed, considering the maximized tension and torsion stiffnesses and minimized bending stiffness of the cross-section as objectives with material weight as the constraint. The optimal configuration results are obtained, which are the alternative armor of flexible risers. Finally, the optimal structures are compared with the commonly used marine flexible riser, which gives a great verification of the methodology feasibility.</p>

Multi-Objective Collaborative Topology Optimization Design of the Strengthening Layer of Flexible Riser

Paper Proceedings: https://asmedigitalcollection.asme.org/OMAE/OMAE2021/volume/85116

OMAE 2021

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