DYNAMIC SIMULATION OF MARINE RISERS MOVING RELATIVE TO EACH OTHER DUE TO VORTEX AND WAKE EFFECTS

This article presents a time domain simulator which simulates the dynamic interaction of two adjacent cylindrical risers moving relative to each other in an ambient steady flow. The main objective of the simulator is to assess whether adjacent marine risers moving in each other's wake will collide or not. The simulator named Time domain RIser Collision Evaluation (TRICE) uses drag and lift coefficients as well as excitation frequencies computed by an in-house developed numerical Navier–Stokes equation solver (CFD). The CFD program computes lift and drag forces, the standard deviation of the excitation forces and the dominant vortex shedding frequency as a function of the relative position of two cylinders restrained from motion. We propose, based on analysis and observations during experiments, that the wake induced oscillation (WIO) behaviour determines if the risers collide or not, and that the U001vortex-induced vibration (VIV) behaviour determines most of the energy in the collision. That is, the wake behaviour controls the gross motions of the risers relative to each other. The current version is limited to handle two cylindrical risers in staggered and tandem configurations. The results from the simulations are successfully compared with experimental data. TRICE predicts the minimum current when collisions occur with a deviation typically better than 8% for both tandem and staggered arrangements.