Numerical Study on Estimation of Static Configuration of Steel Lazy Wave Riser Using Dynamic Relaxation Method

Abstract

This paper presents an estimation method for the static configuration of a steel lazy wave riser (SLWR) using the dynamic relaxation method applied to estimate the configuration of structures with strong geometric non-linearity. The lumped mass model is introduced to reflect the flexible structural characteristics of the riser. In the lumped mass model, the tensions, shear forces, buoyancy, self-weights, and seabed reaction forces at nodal points are considered in order to find the static configuration of the SLWR. The dynamic relaxation method using a viscous damping formulation is applied to the static configuration analysis. Fictitious masses are defined at nodal points using the sum of the largest direct stiffness values of nodal points to ensure the numerical stability. Various case studies were performed according to the bending stiffness and size of the buoyancy module using the dynamic relaxation method. OrcaFlex was employed to validate the accuracy of the developed numerical method.

Keywords

• Dynamic relaxation method
• Static configuration
• Lumped mass model
• Fictitious mass
• Viscous damping formulation
• Steel lazy wave riser(SLWR)