Investigation of Impact of New Design Code on Riser System Design

Top tensioned risers are fluid conduits from subsea equipment to surface floating production platforms. The advantages of using top tensioned risers are the ability to drill and complete through the production riser, ease of access of the production trees for gas lift operation, and the simplicity of workover and redrill. The integrity of a riser system plays an important role in deepwater developments. Top tensioned risers (TTRs) and steel catenary risers (SCRs) have been widely used with floating production systems such as Spars and TLPs. API RP 2RD [1] has been used to guide riser system design for the last decade. API RP 2RD is being revised as a code (ISO 13628-12) that will also be adopted as a new API code. This paper investigates the impacts of the new design code on the riser system design. This paper first discusses the differences between ISO/WD 13628-12 and the existing API RP 2RD code, particularly the section on design criteria for pipes. The Holstein top tensioned riser system is chosen as an example to evaluate the riser system design impacts. The risers have been installed and successfully producing oil since 2005. The results of the nonlinear finite element program ABAQUS used to analyze the Holstein top tensioned risers were evaluated according to the API RP 2RD. The same analytical results are used for evaluating the impact of the proposed ISO 13628-12 in the area of stress evaluation.