An Investigation of the Load Carrying Capacity of Pipelines Under Accidental and Longitudinal Moving (Sliding) Loads

In accidental scenarios on subsea pipeline systems, like the collision of two adjacent subsea risers, accidental loads are commonly considered as stationary loads; stationary loads refer to loads that act only normal to the pipe at one location. Hence, the potential considerable effects of moving (sliding) accidental loads are neglected; the term moving load refers to the location with respect to time. Accordingly, recent works for ship hull structures show that the structural resistance mobilized against the moving loads is significantly lower than against the stationary loads of similar magnitude; when the loads incite plastic damage. As such, it is reasonable to study the effects of lateral motion of accidental loads on the response of subsea pipelines. This paper implements finite element analyses to investigate the load carrying capacity of a cylindrical shell subject to moving loads; LS-Dyna software package with explicit time-integration scheme is employed in numerical simulations; only crumpling deformation of the cylinders are studied. This research demonstrates that the capacity of a cylindrical shell subject to a moving load, causing plastic damage, is considerably less than its capacity under a stationary load of similar magnitude.