Weiping Huang - Dynamics of Deepwater Riser: Theory and Method

Jointly published with Shanghai Jiao Tong University Press

The print edition is not for sale in China (Mainland). Customers from China (Mainland) please order the print book from: Shanghai Jiao Tong University Press.

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Marine riser is a new type of the equipments for the deepwater oil & gas development and a structure with lager flexibility, of which the dynamic characteristic is different from the other marine structures. Besides, for the deepwater risers with different functions, their loads and boundary conditions for dynamic analysis are different due to different configuration. If the differences in the structure and function of deepwater riser are not known, it will be often confused when the different function risers are modeled for dynamic analysis. It will lead to a deviation on the parameters and boundary condition. So, the type, structure and characteristic of deepwater risers are introduced briefly in Chap. respectively in order to be referenced by the readers whose major is not Navel Architecture and Marine Engineering.

The emphasis contents discussed in detail in Chaps. include some of theories and methods for the dynamic analysis of the deepwater risers. The most of the viewpoints and methods are proposed in recent years and some of these are authors works of which some of the viewpoints, such as whether the effective or equivalent tension of a riser should be used to calculate the geometric stiffness of the riser and the effect of the flow velocity in a riser on the dynamic characteristic of the riser, are inconsistent with those accepted currently. Of course, the explanation on authors viewpoints is given based on the basic concepts of the mechanics and the physical phenomenon. And also, the contrary of the viewpoints to those accepted currently and the basic mechanics concepts or physical phenomenon are explained in detail. These are the most splendid parts of this book.

The most of the contents in this book are from the those of my postgraduates such as Chaofan Yang, Xintao Zhou and Kunhong Luo. Their brilliant works add luster to this book.

This book could be a reference for the engineering design of the deepwater risers and a reference book for the students majored in Navel Architecture and Marine Engineering.

Deepwater risers are one of the important facilities for deepwater oil & gas development and the link between subsea wellheads and a unit at sea surface. For the sake of description, deepwater risers can be classified as production riser and drilling riser according to their functions and configurations. A production risers function is to transport oil, gas and water from/to the well to/from their host unit and a drilling risers function is to cycle drilling liquid. Although the facilities with the same function can be found in offshore oil & gas industry, they are quite different in structural configuration thereby in dynamical characteristics.

The configuration of production riser changes with the developing mode of oil field which is dry tree mode or wet tree mode. The risers applied in dry tree and wet tree modes are called rigid riser and flexible riser respectively. So, the dry tree and wet tree mode are also called rigid and flexible development mode respectively. The rigid riser is also called top tensioned riser (TTR) and used for water injection as well as oil & gas lifting from subsea well. The flexible riser has different configurations such as simple or S shape catenary and is applied for transporting oil & gas and water. The rigid riser can not be found in a wet tree system but the flexible risers could be found in a dry tree system.

The flexible riser is made of steel or composite pipe. That is made of steel is called steel catenary riser (SCR). For wet tree mode, the Christmas tree is installed on the wellhead at sea floor and the oil & gas extracted from subsea well are pumped to a production unit at the sea surface after preprocessed in subsea systems. The oil & gas reprocessed on the unit are transported with shuttle tanker or flexible riser+subsea pipeline to onshore. Therefore, the rigid riser is not needed in wet tree mode. But another type of riser can be found in wet tree mode. It is a free standing hybrid riser (FSHR) and composed of an upright riser and a jumper. The upright riser is kept free standing by a set of aircan. So, the upright riser of a FSHR can be classified as top tensioned riser according to its structure and mechanics attribution.