A Methodology to Predict the Remaining Fatigue Life of a Flexible Pipe With Broken Tensile Armor Wires

In this work, an approach to predict the remaining fatigue life of flexible pipes with damages in their tensile armor wires is proposed. This approach relies on a previous proposed approach to calculate the fatigue life of intact flexible pipes. By relying on results from theoretical and experimental investigations, the previous proposed expressions were modified in order to account for damages in the tensile armor wires of these structures. Furthermore, the computation of the fatigue life was also modified in order to account for results from inspections in these pipes thus allowing the estimative of the remaining fatigue life of the pipe. The use of this methodology is illustrated in the analysis of a 9.13″ flexible pipe considering different conditions in its outer tensile armor wires: intact and with one up to ten wires broken along time. The results obtained indicate that the rupture of the tensile armor wires may significantly reduce the fatigue life of flexible pipes and, consequently, may lead to the premature failure of the pipe.