Analytical study of lateral thermal buckling for subsea
pipelines with sleeper
Z.K. Wang, Y.G. Tang & G.H.M. van der Heijden
Unburied subsea pipelines operating under high-temperature and high-pressure
conditions tend to relieve their axial compressive force by forming lateral
buckles. Uncontrolled lateral buckling may lead to pipeline failure. In
order to control lateral buckling, a sleeper is often employed as a
buckle-initiation technique. In this study, analytical solutions of lateral
buckling for unburied subsea pipelines with sleeper are derived. An energy
analysis is employed to investigate the stability of the buckled pipeline.
The influence of sleeper height and sleeper friction on pipeline buckled
configurations and typical lateral buckling behaviour is illustrated and
analysed. The results are shown to be in very good agreement with
experimental data in the literature. We also discuss the effect of
imperfections and conduct an error analysis of one of the main assumptions
of the proposed analytical method. Our results show that increasing the
height of the sleeper or decreasing the friction between pipeline and
sleeper can all be used to decrease the minimum critical temperature
difference. However, only the sleeper height is effective in substantially
reducing the maximum compressive stress.
keywords: subsea pipeline, lateral buckling, beam-column, sleeper, analytical
solution
Thin-Walled Structures 122, 17-29 (2018)