A Parametric Study on Effects of Environmental Loadings on Fatigue Life of Steel Catenary Risers (Using a Nonlinear Cyclic Riser-Soil Interaction Model)

Steel catenary risers (SCRs) are often the preferred option for subsea tie-back to floating platforms in deep water due to their conceptual simplicity, ease of construction and installation and simple interface with the flowlines. Fatigue design of SCRs, particularly in the touch down area (TDA), has always been one of the major engineering challenges. Traditionally, fatigue assessment of SCRs has usually been highly conservative, because of lack of precise understanding of the non-linear soil-riser-interaction in the TDA. Most fatigue studies are based on assumed linear stiffness for the seabed, partly because of the lack of robust non-linear riser-seabed interaction models and partly because the linear response simplifies the fatigue study. The recent availability of non-linear seabed response models provides an opportunity to improve fatigue assessment, but it is first necessary to evaluate how best to conduct fatigue studies for such nonlinear systems which can be sensitive to wide range of input parameters. This paper outlines a new advanced numerical model, considering nonlinear cyclic riser-soil interaction behavior, used to determine the contribution of different loading parameters on fatigue damage of SCRs in the TDA in deep water soft sediments. The main loading parameters considered are: different motions of floating vessels, wave heights, wave periods and wave packs ordering. Numerical modeling has shown that over 95% of the fatigue damage corresponds to floating vessel motion parallel to the riser axis at the connection point to the vessel. It is also shown that riser response at TDA is highly influenced with amplitude and period of the environmental loadings.