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Offshore pipeline construction

Tensioner

All pipelay vessels are fitted with tensioners and stingers (sometimes called ramps). The tensioners hold the suspended weight of pipe between the vessel and sea bed, preventing pipeline buckling. Stingers are tubular steel structures with a number of rollers that support the pipeline and allow it to bend, in a controlled radius, from horizontal to the required departure angle. Occasionally though, through material defect or buckling, the pipeline will accidentally flood with water. Under those circumstances, the tensioners must be able to hold the much heavier suspended weight of the flooded pipeline while repair and de-watering are performed.

Pipeline tensioner

Large diameter pipelines have been installed in water depths of up to 610 meters. At this depth, a 24-in. diameter pipeline requires a maximum of 300 tons tension to support it and a stinger giving a pipeline departure angle from the vessel of 45. At a water depth of 3,500 meters, using conventional S-lay pipelay requires a tension capacity of 1,100 tons for a dry pipeline and 2,20 tons if flooded. The stinger must provide a departure angle of 70-75 from the horizontal. A hydraulic pipeline tensioner is based on a number of hydraulically operated moving clamps.

The tensioner can feed out or reel in an Oman-India 24-in. pipeline with the required 1,100 tons tension at a speed of about 24 meters/minute, a comparable speed to existing electric tensioners. If the pipeline is accidentally flooded, then the tensioner can hold the resulting 2,200 ton load.

Each clamp is controlled by three hydraulic cylinders. Control of hydraulic fluid pressure is governed by the measured rate of pipeline movement which is continuously monitored and fed into the control system for continuous revising of hydraulic fluid pressure. As the pipeline is retrieved, pipe sections can be cut off the end until the damaged area has been removed. The hydraulic tensioner can retrieve a pipeline by reversing the steps required to lower it.

A typical lay barge method

Reel barge

Reel barge

J-lay method

J lay method

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