Nonlinear Dynamic Analysis of an Offshore Drilling Riser

CHUKU, Promise
M.Tech (Marine Engineering)
Rivers State University, Port Harcourt

A PhD Proposal Submitted to the Postgraduate School, Rivers State University,

Nkpolu-Oroworukwo, Port Harcourt in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the
Admission of Application for a Doctorate Degree Programme in Marine Engineering
(Offshore and Subsea Engineering Option), Faculty of Engineering.

October, 2020
Introduction

The exploitation of offshore oil and gas resources faces complex ocean climate and

environment; hence, the requirements for the reliability of equipment and the safety of

operation are of high standard. Offshore drilling is different from onshore drilling since

drilling rigs and drilling mud reach the wellhead through a drilling riser system whose length

is determined by sea depth. The riser system can be viewed as an extension of borehole since

its bottom side joins with a blowout preventer which is installed on the wellhead; while its

topside is connected with a drilling platform or a drilling vessel via a telescopic joint and

flexible joint. During the offshore drilling, the riser swings along with the ocean

environmental loads, which will make it deflect and vibrate. Both the excessive deflection

and the severe vibration will challenge the stability of the riser and, further, bring the

potential risk for the offshore drilling operation.

The investigations of the dynamics of offshore drilling risers are traced back to the 1970s.

According to both the fourth-order differential equation of the Euler–Bernoulli beam and the

Morison equation, (Burke, 1973) built up a dynamic model of a riser system applied in 800 ft

sea depth according to Newtonian mechanics. Based on Burke’s work, scholars applied the

finite element method to analyse the riser dynamics for two-dimension (Patel & Sarohia

(1984); Yue, et.al. (2013)) or three-dimension conditions.

 Figure 1.0: Marine Drilling Rig with Marine Drilling Riser

Offshore risers are excited by ocean currents, waves and the vessel motion. These excitations

produce significant dynamic stresses in the risers, the natural frequencies of which fall within

the range of most excitation frequencies. Generally, deep risers have natural frequencies that

lie within the dominant frequencies of most of the frequently occurring sea states and,

consequently have a large dynamic response.

The Steel Catenary Riser (SCR) concept has been recently used in almost every new deep

water field development around the world. SCRs have been vital to deep water field

developments. Steel catenary risers offer a low cost alternative to conventionally used rigid

and flexible risers on floating platforms and can also provide economic riser design solutions

for fixed platforms. Their use has given a new dimension to oil exploration and transportation

in water depths where other riser concepts could not tolerate the environmental loads or

would have become costly. SCR designs are very sensitive to floating support platform

characteristics to which they are typically attached. In addition to pipe stresses, the main

design issue for the SCR concept is fatigue related. There are two main sources of fatigue:

random wave fatigue and vortex-induced vibration (VIV) fatigue.

Figure 2.0: Systematic Diagram of an Offshore Structure with Riser

Brief History

Deepwater well testing is generally conducted on a floating platform, as illustrated in Figure

1. The top tension of the riser and the test string are provided by a tensioner and a hook,

respectively. The riser and the conductor comprise the outer string system with connection of

the wellhead, forming a circulation channel for testing fluid. The inner string system is

composed of oil tube/drill pipe, centralizer, subsea test tree, and fluted hanger (Bavidge

2013), forming a passage for hydrocarbons from the sea floor to the platform, which can be

used to measure and control the test parameters. The entire deep water test string system is

not only subjected to various external loads (e.g., waves, currents, and platform movement)

but also random contact and collision between the test string and the riser.

Figure 3.0: Schematic Diagram for the Deep Water Test String System
An equivalent composite model is often used to analyse deep water double-layer hydrocarbon

strings. In this model, it is assumed that the pipes move together uniformly under external

and internal loading, and the equivalent pipe bending and tension are shared equally based on

the stiffness and the bearing area of the pipes. This model can be used to analyze motion, but

is likely to be inaccurate in fatigue damage evaluation (Harrison & Helle 2007). To study the

interaction between the test string and the riser, and the structural response of a deep water

test string in various operating modes, a model of the nonlinear dynamics for a deep water

test string is developed. Vibration and damage in deep water test strings are studied to

provide guidelines for structural design and operation management.

Much research on the fatigue assessment of deep water drilling riser system has been carried

out at present. Time domain method and frequency-domain method are often used to

calculate wave induced fatigue. In the time-domain method, the dynamic response and

fatigue of riser system are calculated directly and the calculation accuracy is high. Compared

with time-domain method, frequency-domain method is low in calculation accuracy due to its

linearization of dynamic analysis equations (Lane, et.al (2001); Steinkjer, et.al. (2010)). The

analysis methods of vortex induced vibration (VIV) include experiment, CFD simulation and

empirical model. The first two methods are mainly applied on the mechanism research of

VIV of riser, while the empirical model has a good application in the vortex induced fatigue

analysis of riser (Trim, et.al (2005); Tognarelli, et.al (2009)). The above studies are focused

on the fatigue assessment of riser in connection mode. In fact, the operation modes of deep

water drilling riser are various, including installation, connection, hard hang-off and soft

hang-off. The riser fatigues in various operation modes have not been studied. Besides, the

combined fatigue and the occupancy of each operation fatigue should also be studied based

on the calculated fatigues of riser in different operation modes.

Material and Method

The hydrodynamic wave load on the riser can be expressed as:

π π 1
F ( x ,t )= ρ C m D o2 u˙w − ρ ( C m−1 ) D o2 ÿ+ ρ D o C D ( u w +u c − ẏ )|uw +u c − ẏ| (1.0)
4 4 2

where ρ is the sea water density, D o is the outside diameter of riser, C m is the inertia

coefficient, C D is the drag coefficient, uw is the water particle velocity, u̇w is the water particle

acceleration, uc is the steady current velocity, ẏ is the riser velocity and ӱ is the riser

acceleration.

The top end of drilling riser system is connected to the drilling platform in all the four

operation modes. The top boundary of drilling riser system is mainly determined by platform

motion. The drilling platform motion under random wave loads can be expressed as

Nw
2 πt
u0 ( t )=u L sin
(
TL )
−α L + ∑ R ( ω n ) D n cos ( k n x −ωn t+ φn +α n )
n=1
(2.0)

where u L is the single amplitude of platform drift motion in the horizontal direction, T L is the

period of platform drift motion, α L is the phase difference between the drift motion and wave

(usually taken as zero), R is the response amplitude operator, Dn is the amplitude of the n-th

wave; k n is the number of the n-th wave; ω n is the circular frequency of the n-th wave; φ n is

the initial phase of the n-th wave; α n is the phase difference between wave motion and wave

frequency motion (usually taken as zero).

The bottom boundary of drilling riser system depends on the operation mode. In installation

and hang-off modes, the bottom of drilling riser system is unconstrained. While in connection

mode, the drilling riser system is connected to conductor which is restrained by surrounding
soil. The soil resistance force per unit length on the conductor under the mudline is expressed

as:

F soil ( x , y )= p ( x , y ) D c ( x ) (3.0)

where p is the resistance pressure; Dc is the outside diameter of conductor

Conclusion

Three key system parameters for an offshore drilling riser were discussed. Specifically, when

considering the influence of sea depth, the riser system working in shallow water has severer

vibration than that working in deeper water; however, the lateral deflection for a longer riser

is relatively larger. In addition, when taking both the top tension and buoyant factor into

considerations to control the dynamic responses of a riser, the combination of a higher top

tension ratio and a lower buoyant factor was illustrated to be better to fulfil lower vibration

and smaller deflection of the riser.

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