Simulative Winding of Roll Formed Profile in Carcass Production for Flexible Pipes

In carcass production for flexible pipe systems roll formed profiles are wound around a mandrel forming an interlocking, flexible structure able to withstand collapse from outside water pressure or mechanical crushing. Carcass is often produced in lengths of several kilometres, which implies numerous welds between coils of stainless steel, often duplex grades. The welds are a source of failure, since fracture from time to time occurs here in the winding stage. A simulative test in form of three-point-bending is developed, which shows promising results together with simplified air- and v-bent profiles allowing offline testing of welds for optimisation purposes. Comparative studies are shown possible but discrepancies in boundary conditions cause the maximum strains in the simulative test to differ from those in production. A study of weld failure is done applying the simulative test and tensile tests using GOM ARAMIS 4M system for strain measurements. The results show strain localization at the weld from onset of yielding caused by the soft, heat affected zone next to the weld seam resulting in a local thinning of the strip similar to what is observed in production.