D-7

ON-BOTTOM STABILITY
 D-7

ON-BOTTOM STABILITY

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1 GENERAL
2 FORCES ON A PIPELINE
3 COMMONLY USED STABILITY ANALYSIS
4 COEFFICIENTS OF FRICTION
5 STABlLITY OF PHELINES IN CLAY
6 PHELINE IN A TRENCH
7 ALTERNATIVE METHODS
7.1 DnVs RP E305 Methods
7.1.1 DYNAMIC ANALYSIS
7.1.2 GENERALIZED METHOD
7.1.3 SIMPLIRED METHOD
8 STABILISATION TECHNIQUES
9 COMPLICATING FACTORS

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 D-7

ON BOTTOM STABILITY

1 GENERAL

Subsea pipelines are installed on the seabed, and are expected to stay at the installed
position during their operational lifetime. Pipelines are subjected to environmental forces
due to waves and currents that can displace them and cause damage to its coatings and even
cause overstressing if the displacements are excessive. To ensure long term safe
operations, pipelines are designed to be stable under worst waves and current loads
expected during its life time, i.e., a pipeline should not be displaced too far from its
installed position. Small movements may be allowed as long as these do not have adverse
effects for the pipeline.

Apart from the environmental loads, pipeline stability depends also on pipeline diameter,
pipeline outer surface condition, seabed soils and seabed topography. Soil/pipeline
interaction needs to be correctly modelled for proper design.

Until recently, simplified methods have been used to design pipeline stability. However,
with pipelines being installed in harsher environmental conditions, with high bottom water
particle velocities, optimisation of design became necessary. In the following, a detailed
discussion is presented on the commonly used method of pipeline on-bottom stability
analysis. A brief discussion of optimisation methods is included. It is recommended that
you should familiarise yourself with the simplified method before attempting to use more
refined methods.

In the end, some more complicating factors affecting pipeline stability are discussed.

2 FORCES ON A PIPELINE

Forces acting on a pipeline are shown in Figure 6.1. Forces due to waves and current
consist of in-line drag and inertia forces, and a transverse lift force. These forces tend to
displace the pipeline from its installed position. The resistance to the horizontal forces is
provided by the frictional forces generated due to the seabed friction and by soil resistance
if the pipeline gets embeded naturally or is installed within a trench. The resistance to the

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vertical lift force comes from the pipelines weight. The pipeline stability condition is
considered to be satisfied when the forces that resist the pipeline displacement are greater
than the forces that tend to displace it.

Since waves give rise to time-dependent velocities, the forces resulting from these are also
dynamic in nature. However, dynamic analysis of a pipeline sitting on the seabed is very
complex and is rarely performed. Instead a quasi-static approach is usually adopted. The
drag, inertia and lift forces due to a wave and the associated current are computed at
different points along the wave cycle and applied onto the pipeline as static loads along
with the other forces on the pipeline. A general discussion of wave and current induced
forces is discussed in Chapter 6.

In case of a pipeline, water particle velocity is the resultant of wave and current induced
velocities. Adding the two vectorially and using the horizontal component of the resultant
velocity vector normal to the pipeline, one gets the following force relations for the unit
length of a pipeline. The following relations are modified form of Morrisons equations
discussed in Chapter 6.

(7. la)

(7. lb)

PZD2
FI =C,pLa (7. lc)
4 w

where D, is the pipe outside diameter including any coatings; VW, I?, and a, are components
of horizontal wave and current velocities, and horizontal acceleration, respectively, normal
to the pipeline axis. Assuming that the waves are approaching the pipeline at an angle a
and current flow direction is at an angle P, then

VW =u,coa (7.2a)

v, VC cosp (7.2b)

aw = a , cosa (7.2~)

where u,, a, are horizontal components of water particle velocity and acceleration near the
seabed due to waves, see Chapter 6, and V, is the current speed near the seabed. It is

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common practice to calculate these velocities at mid depth of pipeline. Average velocities
over the pipe depth are also used.

The hydrodynamic coefficients have been discussed in Chapter 6. The correct approach is
to determine these coefficients using the Reynolds number and the Keulegan-Carpenter
number for the location. However, following coefficients are commonly used in design

CD= 0.7
CI = 3.29
CL = 0.9.

It is noted that the coefficient inertia C, = 3.29 for a pipeline in contact with the seabed. I f
the pipeline is not in contact with the pipeline, appropriate values using figures in Chapter
6 are used.

3 COMMONLY USED STABILITY ANALYSIS

Apart from the environmental forces, as discussed in Section 2, other forces that act on the
pipeline are buoyancy, self-weight of pipe and its contents, and friction between the pipe
and the seabed. Pipelines are designed so that the following two criteria are satisfied:

a submerged weight of the pipe is greater than the lift force in the vertical
direction
l horizontal frictional force is greater than the combined drag and inertia
force.

These criteria are expressed as follows:

(7.3a)

W - F , >l.lF, (7.3b)

where ,D is the coefficient of friction between pipe and the seabed; W is the weight of the
pipe, coatings and contents; Fs, is the buoyancy forces on the pipe. The factor 1.1 is an
accepted factor of safety. This method analyses the stability of a unit length of the pipe
considering the wave forces as static loads acting at any instant of time.

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Self-weight of the pipe and its contents is generally not sufficient to satisfy these criteria.
In order to achieve this, pipelines are coated on the outside with high density concrete.
The thickness of concrete coating required is determined by an iterative procedure such that
the above criteria are satisfied for the worst loading combination of loads.

The iterative procedure consists of calculating the drag, inertia and lift forces for the given
wave and current data at different points aiong the wave cycle, i.e., at different wave phase
angles 8, and to combine these forces with other loads acting on the pipeline through
relations (7.2). If the criteria of (7.2) are not satisfied for all points along the wave cycle,
weight of the pipeline is increase by increasing its concrete coating thickness until the
criteria (7.2) are satisfied. Normally, coating thicknesses for analysis purposes are
increased in steps of lo-12 mm. To avoid practical difficulties of application of concrete
coating and handling, the resultant thickness of concrete should not be less than about 38
mm and not more than about 150 mm.

It is pointed out that in the above method, the wave height used to determine the forces is
the significant wave height and not the maximum height. This approach has been found
satisfactory over many decades. The origin of this method lies probably in the soil
transportation techniques where the significant wave height is used in mathematical models.
Attempts were made to use the maximum wave height but were abandoned when the results
were not satisfactory.

The above-simplified method is the most commonly used in pipeline stability and has been
found to be satisfactory for design. However, there are situations where this simplistic
approach may not be appropriate. Such situations generally arise when the concrete coating
thickness determined from the simplified method is excessive either from application
considerations or from installation considerations. More sophisticated methods have been
developed to cater for situations where the application of the simplistic method may not be
considered appropriate. There are no simple criteria to determine the limits of the
application of the above method. Experience is the answer. In the following sections, we
introduce alternative approaches. It is recommended not to attempt the alternative methods
until some experience has been gained with the above-simplified method.

In many cases, pipelines are trenched for safety reasons. In such cases, pipelines are
designed not to lift out of the trench by the lift force. For trenched pipelines, the
submerged weight of the pipe must be sufficient to resist lift force. The trench side helps
in resisting the horizontal forces.

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4 COEFFICIENTS OF FRICTION

Friction between the pipeline sitting on the seabed and the seabed itself plays an important
role by offering resistance to pipeline movement due to the environmental forces. Hence,
it is useful to have rough rather than the smooth pipe outer surface. In principle,
coefficient of friction should be determined for every new pipeline by conducting
appropriate model tests or full-scale tests. However, this can be time consuming and costly
affair. Based on representative tests, the coefficients of lateral friction between 0.5 and 1.2
are normally used. The following table gives typical values used in the North Sea

Soil Type Lateral Friction Axial Friction

Minimum Maximum Minimum Maximum
Non-cohesive 0.5 0.9 0.55 1.2
(sand)
Cohesive (clay, 0.3 0.75 0.3 1.0
silt)

During soil investigations, angle of friction for non-cohesive soils is determined which can
be used to assess the coefficient of friction. If the angel of friction is a,, then

p = tan(af) (7.4)

5 STABILITY OF PIPELINES IN CLAY

The above method of using frictional resistance is usually applied to non-cohesive soils or
to relatively hard cohesive soils. In cohesive soils, another approach is to determine pipe
embedment and lateral resistance force. This is discussed in References [7. l- 7.31. The
method is outlined here

l Compute submerged weight of pipeline per unit length, W,

l Obtain undrained shear strength from soils investigation report
l Compute the pipe embedment for different area of contact for the following
equations

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 05

for b<D, 12 (7.5a)

B=D, for b>D0/2 (7Sb)

where B is the width of embedment,

l Calculate the bearing pressure from the following equation

K (7.6)
Ob =2%
l Compute soil bearing capacity for the following equation

oc =4cb + yb (7.7)

where c, is soil cohesion and y is the buoyant weight of the soil.

l The value of b is obtained when gb= Q=.

l The soil resistance to the pipe movement is determined from the equations

Rso, = Ncl b Do for b>D, (7.8a)

for b I D, (7.8b)

where iVcl is a function of embedment, Reference [7.2].

6 PIPELINE IN A TRENCH

If the pipeline is trenched, there is good probability that it would be covered by the natural
seabed soils over a period of time, particularly if the seabed soils consist of sand or silty
clay. However, a trench in clay may not be filled and the pipeline would be exposed to
wave and current loads. It is a common practice to fill the trench with the local soils after
the pipeline has been laid in the trench.

In case of a pipeline in a trench, we must ensure that pipe weight is sufficient to overcome
lift force due to waves and current thus it can not be lifted out of the trench. The side
slope will help in horizontal stability. Even if a pipeline is to be buried after trenching, it

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must be shown to be stable in the trench before it is covered with soil. Vertical stability
should be checked by using environmental data for the installation period. Normally,
environmental data having a return period of one year used.

The flow of water particles is modified due to a trench. In Reference [7.4], changes in
water particle velocity due to a trench have been reported. It shows that the velocity at the
bottom of a 2-m deep trench, with side slopes of 30, is only 39 % of the undisturbed
velocity. The variation is shown to be linear, therefore, we could use the following
relation to determine the water particle velocity in a trench

v, = (1 -0.305 d,) v, ( 7.9 >

where
V, = Water particle velocity in a trench
d, = Depth below undisturbed seabed
V, = Undisturbed velocity

The effect of a slope angle can be easily accounted for by the following relation

1
1
w, =
sin p w, (7.10)
cosp+-
P 1
where
F = slope angle of the trench
W, = Weight in trench
W, = Weight outside trench

7 ALTERNATIVE METHODS

In the late 70s and early 80s, some pipelines designed for stability using the foregoing
approach, were found to be moving on the seabed with the loss of concrete coating. To
investigate the problem, pipeline and the wave forces were analysed using time-domain
dynamic analysis. This programme involved a number of model tests to determine
hydrodynamic coefficients, friction factors, etc.

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In the 80s AGA of USA and DnV of Norway both initiated comprehensive research
projects on pipeline stability which included mode1 tests and development of analyses
methods. DnVs project was titled PIPESTAB Project. As a result of these research
projects, DnV has produced a Recommended Practice, RP E305 and AGA has released a
suite of computer programs. The following sections briefly introduce DnVs approach.

7.1 DnVs RP E305 Methods

DnV have produced a recommended practice, RP E305, for the on-stability design of
submarine pipelines which proposes the following three levels of analysis.

7.1 r 1 DYNAMIC ANALYSIS

This method involves a dynamic simulation of a section of pipeline on the seabed. A s

recognised by DnV, this method shall be used only in special circumstances due to the
complexities of modelling correctly the pipe/soil interaction, wave and current forces and
other restraints if any. Such an analysis will be highly non-linear and in time domain.

7.1.2 GENER4LIZED klETHOD

During the PIPESTAB project, several dynamic simulations were performed for different
combinations of pipe data, environmental data, etc. Based on the results of these dynamic
simulations, DnV developed a generalized method through the use of a set of non-
dimensional parameters and for particular end conditions.

By using the given pipe and other data, controlling non-dimensional parameters are
calculated. Using these parameters and graphs given in RP E305, non-dimensional weight
parameter is determined for a selected allowable pipe movement of say 10 m or 20 m. By
an iterative procedure, required pipe weight and hence coating thickness can be determined.
The graphs are given for sandy and clay soils.

Finally, the maximum strain is calculated from the graphs. Maximum strain that is allowed
is 0.2 %. If the calculated strain exceeds 0.2 %, further analysis is required. The
procedure outline is illustrated in Figure 7.3,

The method is based on certain assumptions that are outlined in RP E305, hence, these
must be checked. However, in most cases there should be no problem.

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7.1.3 SIMPLIFIED METHOD

The simplified method is used in all normal design situations. The method is based on a
static stability approach that calibrates the classical static design approach with the help of
generalised stability method. A calibration factor is included that allows the pipeline to
displace from its installed position of up to 20 m. The method uses constant values of the
hydrodynamic coefficients but the method should still produce results similar to the
classical method.

The soil friction factors to be used in this method are:

Sand: 0.7
Clay: use Figure 7.4

The stability according to the simplified method is given by the following relation

(7.11)

where F, is a calibration factor to be determined from Figure 7.5. In Figure 7.5, M is the
ratio of significant velocity and the steady current at the seabed. DnV 305 uses modifies
forms of relations for the hydrodynamic forces defined as follows

FD = 0.5pwD,C&, cosB+~#J, cosB+v,) (7.12a)

(7.12b)

FL = 0.5pwD,C, (U, cost9 + y,) (7.12~)

where U, and a, are significant wave velocity and acceleration, respectively, at the seabed;
V, is the current speed at the seabed; 8 is the phase angle in the wave cycle. Note that

2xu

T, is zero up-crossing period for the wave.

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DnV RP 305 also gives the plots for determining U, and T, for a given significant wave and
are reproduced here in Figures 7.6 and 7.7.

In this authors opinion, it is not necessary to use DnVs simplified method; classical
method may be used as there is no improvement on analysis. For complex problems,
where classical method gives unrealistic concrete coating thickness, generalised or dynamic
stability methods may be used.

8 STABILISATION TECHNIQUES

In some situations, it may not be practical to achieve stability with through concrete weight
coating. Such situations are rare.

Stability can enhanced by other means such as covering the pipeline with rock or bitumen
mattresses. This method of stabilisation is costly and hence it is used in exceptional
circumstances and that too for short sections.

9 COMPLICATING FACTORS

Problems can arise in some seabed soils that are vulnerable to liquefaction or scour. The
stabilisation in such cases is ensured by other means. This subject is discussed in Chapter
11.

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 SUMMARY POINTS

PIPELINE STABILITY:
l Subsea pipelines expected to stay where installed
l Environmental forces tend to move the pipeline
l Small movements may be permitted
l Environmental forces caused by waves and currents
l Storms: return period (years) of 100, 10,5 and 1
considered
l Appropriate wave theory to be used -
l Simplified theories used to date
l New methods developed for difficult conditions
 PIPELINE STABILITY:
l FORCES ON A PIPELINE ON SEABED:
+ Horizontal forces: Drag, inertia and friction
+ Vertical: Submerged weight and lift
+ Friction resists horizontal forces, submerged weight resists
vertical lift
+ Combined velocities due to waves & current considered
+ Waves give rise to time-dependent velocities/forces
+ Dynamic analysis is complex, quasi-static approach used
+ Wave/current forces computed for wave cycle and stability
checked at each step
+ Formulae for forces in Notes

PIPELINE STABILITY:
l STABILTY ANALYSIS:
+ Simplified method used discussed here
+ Two criteria
l submerged weight > lift force
+ horizontal frictional force > combined drag and inertia
force
+ See Notes for mathematical formulations
+ Stability in Clays: See Notes
 PIPELINE STABILITY:
l Pipeline in a Trench:
+ Normally, ensure that submerged weight is sufficient to
resist vertical lift
+ Alternatively, method in Notes may be used.
l Stabilisation Techniques:
l Concrete coating
l Trenching
l Cover: rock, mattresses

PIPELINE STABILITY:
l Alternative Approaches:
+ DnV and AGA developed three levels of analysis; DnV
approach given in RI? E305.
l DnV RI? E305 Mathods:
+ Dynamic Analysis: Full dynamic analysis
+ Generalised Analysis: Set of parameters established
from dynamic anaiysis. Non-dimensiona weight can
be determined that would allow lo-20 m movement.
+ Simp@edMethod: Simplified approach has been
calibrated by using generalised analysis; uses fixed
values of hydrodynamic coefficients. Reproduced in
Notes.

:.