2021/08/27 by Ning Fan, Wangcheng Zhang, Fauzan Sahdi +1 · 1 citation
Earth and Planetary Sciences · Engineering · Environmental Science · #Engineering #Geological formations and processes #Geology #Geotechnical Engineering and Underground Structures #Geotechnical engineering #Marine engineering #Mechanical engineering #Methane Hydrates and Related Phenomena #Offshore geotechnical engineering #Petroleum engineering #Pipeline (software) #Pipeline transport #Seabed #Submarine pipeline
paper · doi:10.1139/cgj-2021-0089
openalex publication_date 2021/08/27 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
There are situations in offshore energy development where potential impact forces between submarine slides and pipelines need to be estimated. The horizontal slide – pipeline impact force, parallel to the main travel direction of the sliding mass and normal to the pipeline axis, is generally dominant compared with other force components and hence of particular concern. In practice, pipelines may be suspended at varying distances above the seabed (gap) and existing methods do not consider how this will affect the horizontal slide – pipeline forces. This paper investigates the effects of pipeline–seabed gap and pipeline diameter on the horizontal slide – pipeline impact force via 181 computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations at Reynolds numbers of 0.36–287. Results show that variation in the pipeline–seabed gap and pipeline diameter alters the slide mass flow behaviour as it flows past the pipeline and hence the impact force when the pipeline–seabed gap is below a critical value. A modified hybrid geotechnical – fluid dynamics framework for estimating the horizontal impact force is proposed by considering the effects of the pipeline–seabed gap and pipeline diameter, which is validated with existing experimental datasets.