An Experimental Study of the Interaction Between Pipe Structure and Internal Flow

Nowadays pipes are widely deployed in the offshore environment especially in the petroleum industry where rigid and flexible pipes are used for well drilling and hydrocarbon production. Whereas during drilling, a mixture of drilling mud, rock cuttings and sometimes gas flows through the drilling riser, during production mono or multiphase (comprising oil, water and gas) flow takes place within the system. However up till now, most of the studies on offshore pipelines and risers have been focused on the pipe structure and its interaction with hydrodynamic forces and offshore platforms. In particular for numerical computation studies and reduced scale model experiments, the pipe is usually modeled as a tensioned beam and sometimes only the internal pressure is taken into account with other effects due to its internal flow being neglected. This paper deals with the interaction between the pipe structure and its internal flow. In order to verify the internal flow effects, an experimental analysis was carried out not using a reduced scale model. In particular, mono-phase fluid flows into the pipe and a parametric analysis using the flow rate was carried out. Discussion about the experimental results and numerical applications is also included.