Proceedings of the Eleventh (2001) International Offshore and Polar Engineering Conference Stavanger, Norway, June 17-22, 2001

Copyright 2001 by The International Society of Offshore and Polar Engineers ISBN 1-880653-51-6(Set); ISBN 1-880653-53-2 (Vol. ll); ISSN 1098-6189(Set)

Steady Current-Induced Drag on Piggyback Risers

Robert Olsen, Shah Huang and Nigel Barltrop
University o f Glasgow Glasgow, United Kingdom

ABSTRACT A key design concern of marine risers for deep water applications is the drag force due to the underwater currents. This project has considered two piggyback riser models with the respective cylinder diameters at 90xl60mm and 90x250mm. A series of runs were carried out in a towing tank to determine the drag coefficients of the individual cylinders in the speed range of 0.75 to 2.8 rn/s. The effects of hydrodynamic interference between the cylinders were investigated by systematically varying the position of the smaller cylinder with respect to the larger one and the current. It was found that the diameter ratio of the two cylinders and the circumferential position of the smaller cylinder with respect to the larger one had significant effects upon the drag loading while the effects of Reynolds number and wall-to-wall gap within the ranges examined were less significant. For the two models examined here, the typical drag coefficient of the larger cylinder is around 0.7, whereas the drag coefficient of the smaller cylinder varies from a negative value of-0.8 to a positive value of 2.7. KEY WORDS: marine riser, drag, hydrodynamic interference, cylinder, towing tank testing. INTRODUCTION A typical vertical marine riser system consists of a surface support vessel, a vertically tensioned riser and a subsea well head connector. The riser spans the water column between the surface vessel and the connection to the well head a few meters above the seabed. The riser usually has a main circular cylinder and one or more smaller piggyback lines clamped to the main one for control and other purposes. For such a piggyback riser system, one of the key design issues is the requirement for top tension. The amount of top tension required is affected primarily by the risers own weight and current induced hydrodynamic forces. This is particularly so for applications in deep waters West of Shetland and West Africa where strong currents are observed across the entire water column and the wave effects become less important as water depth becomes greater. Excessive requirements of top tension not only complicates riser system design and limits the selection of surface support vessels, it may also demand extra support using external buoyancy.

The current induced hydrodynamic forcing acting on a pipe with an attached piggyback line has not been thoroughly investigated nor is it well understood. The present design practise simply ignores the piggyback line and uses the drag coefficients derived from an isolated circular cylinder. The mean lift force due to asymmetric positioning of the piggyback riser with respect to the current is entirely neglected. Further it is unclear how the piggyback line would affect the shedding of vortices and the ensuing vibrations of the individual cylinders and the two as a whole. There is a plethora of publications on steady and oscillatory cross flows passing around solitude circular cylinders. For the steady cross flow case, the mean in-line drag force and oscillatory lift force due to vortex shedding have both been well investigated. Significantly less work has been done on steady flow around multi-cylinders. For the problem of interaction between two cylinders, nearly all the work that has been done has been with two cylinders of an equal diameter. The steady cross flow around two cylinders of different diameters appears to be largely neglected. As a result, very little information of hydrodynamic forces on piggyback risers is available to designers. Bearman and Wadcock (1973) carried out an experiment in a wind tunnel on two cylinders side by side in a cross flow. The two cylinders have the same diameter and the emphasis of the experiment is on the effect of the cylinder gap on vortex shedding. The Reynolds number is somewhat low at 2.5x104. The work concludes that there is a repulsive mean force acting between the two cylinders and at very small gaps the drag of the cylinders in combination is less that the sum of the drag of the cylinders in isolation. Zdravkovich (1987) reviewed and categorised the disorderly state of various test data on the effects of interference between circular cylinders. It concludes that only for two cylinders of equal diameter, either in tandem or side by side in cross flow, is there a reasonably complete picture. The information depletes rapidly as the number of cylinders increases or two cylinders of different sizes are involved. Baxendale et al (1985) investigated the hydrodynamic interaction of two cylinders having different diameters. The experiment was carried out in a wind tunnel with the two cylinder diameters at 8 and 16mm respectively and the Reynolds number based upon the larger cylinder diameter at 1.45x104. A series of cylinder gaps are investigated with the minimum distance at 9mm between cylinder surfaces. The work shows that the orientation and cylinder gap have significant effect upon drag and lift force coefficients. 276

It can be summarised that for a typical piggyback riser, where the diameter of the larger cylinder is considerably greater than that of the smaller cylinder and the cylinder gap is of the order of the smaller diameter, information on the hydrodynamic forces is particularly limited. It is to this area that the present paper is directed. E X P E R I M E N T A L SET-UP The experiments were conducted in the Hydrodynamic Laboratory of the Department of Naval Architecture and Ocean Engineering, University of Glasgow. The towing tank is 77m long, 4.6m wide and 2.7m deep. The carriage has a maximum speed of 3.5m/s. The model w ~ placed in the tank horizontally in mid water depth and perpendicular to tank walls. To ensure a two-dimensional flow, each cylinder consisted of three sections, a test section with a dummy section on either side. The aspect ratio of the whole model is in the region of 8, which is believed to be sufficient. The t i m e samples obtained were limited by the length of the tank, and were generally shorter than what would have been obtained from a wind or water tunnel. There are two sets of tests. In the first set the model consists of two cylinders with 90mm and 160ram diameters, while in the second set the diameters are 90mm and 250mm. All the cylinders used have three sections, i.e. the 100ram long central test section and two dummy sections 1.2m long. Between the test sections and the dummy sections there was a gap of 2mm. The total cylinde/length is the same for all

three cylinders at 2.5m. The cylinders were made of extruded PVC tubes supported on steel beams running longitudinal along the centre of the cylinders. A schematic of the test set-up is given in Fig. 1. Fig. 2 illustrates cross section arrangement of the two cylinders. In each set of tests, smaller cylinder is placed at different positions with respect to larger cylinder and the current. This was achieved by having smaller cylinder mounted on two rotating arms. the the the the

For each cylinder, the force detection device was placed within the annulus space of the central section. The very limited space available, especially in the case of the 90mm cylinder, imposed a serious constrain on the choice of devices. Furthermore the device had to be submersible over a fairly long period of time. The final solution chosen were small strain gauged bars made out of aluminium. The larger space available within the 250mm cylinder allowed for a slightly different set-up, Strain gauged brass plates were used to eliminate any off-axis bending stresses. In addition to the slightly modified force transducers, a series of pressure transducers were also used to measure the pressure distribution around the cylinders circumference. The number of pressure transducers used was limited by the number of channels available on the data acquisition system. Neither of these set-ups was able to provide results of satisfactory quality for the lifting force, hence the lifting forces are not presented or discussed herein. The data acquisition system consisted of rudimentary signal filtering and amplification devices and a data-logging computer The sampling rate was fixed at 50Hz for all the test runs.

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90xl6Omm Model Speed Spacing

About 13 speeds ranging from 1.0 to 2.9m/s

90x250mm Model
llspeedsrangingffom0.75to 2.2~s

Comments
The maximum speeds in both cases were limited by the carriage towing power. The corresponding wall-to-wall distances are 4, 26 and 49mm for the smaller model and 4, 45 and 90mm respectively for the larger model. The angle a is defined as o~= 0 for the two cylinders positioned in-line with the smaller one upstream.

129, 151 and 174 mm (Centre-to-Centre distance)

174, 219 and 264mm (Centreto-Centre distance)

0 , 45 , 90 , 135 and 180

0 , 45 , 90 , 135and 180

Table 1: Details of the test runs carried out in the towing tank, the total number of runs being 360.
277

RESULTS

From the time-histories RMS values of the drag forces were determined. This force was then non-dimensionalized using the respective cylinder diameters. Results are given in Figs. 3 and 4 for the 90xl60mm and 90x250mm models respectively presented as the drag
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278

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279

CONCLUSIONS Based upon the experimental results, the following conclusions can be drawn. For the two models investigated here, the drag coefficient of the larger one varies within a narrow band, typically between 0.5 and t.2. The drag coefficient of the larger cylinder has its lowest value where the cylinder is situated in the wake of the smaller cylinder. The effect of the Reynolds number is not significant for either of the two models at the towing velocities investigated in this study. The drag coefficient of the piggyback line is strongly influenced by circumferential position around the larger cylinder. This is particularly so when the diameter ratio between the two cylinders is great. In the case of 90x250mm model, for example, at a constant towing speed of 1.6m/s the drag coefficient of the piggyback line varies from 2.7 to -0.2 depending on its relative position to the larger cylinder. The piggyback line has a negative drag when it is in the wake of the larger cylinder. In the case of 90x250mm model the typical negative drag coefficient is around -0.2, whereas in the case of 90xl60mm model it is around -0.8. Depending upon the diameter ratio of the two cylinders, the drag force coefficient on the smaller cylinder can be significantly increased. In the case of 90x250mm model, the piggyback line has a maximum drag coefficient of around 2.5. This has significant implications on the design of clamps that are commonly used to bind a piggyback line to a larger pipe. It was observed during the tests that the relative position of the piggyback line to the larger cylinder has a strong influence on its vortex induced vibrations which in some cases were very severe. The tests were carried out with the models placed horizontally in the middle of the tank which has a water depth of 2.7m. From the pressure recordings around the circumferential of the 250ram cylinder it can be surmised that the free surface and the tank bottom have an asymmetric effect on the boundary conditions. A natural progression of the present project would be to study the lift forces experimentally. To gain insight into the hydrodynamic interaction between two cylinders of different diameters at close proximity, more detailed measurements are required which include flow structures in the near field and pressure distributions around the cylinders.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This research was sponsored by the Engineering and Physical Science Research Council of United Kingdom and BP. REFERENCES Baxendale AJ, Grant I And Barnes FH (1985). "The flow past two cylinders having different diameters" Aeronautical Journal, pp 125-134. Bearman PW and Wadcock AJ (1973). "The interaction between a pair of circular cylinders normal to a stream" Journal of Fluid Mech, vol. 61, part 3, pp 499-511. Bokaian A and Geoola F (1985). "Hydrodynamic Forces on a Pair of Cylinders" OTC 5007, 17th Annual OTC in Houston, pp 413-420. Heideman JC and Sarpkaya T (1985). "Hydrodynamic Forces on Dense Arrays of Cylinders" OTC 5008, 17th Annual OTC in Houston, pp 421-428. Lam K and Lo SC (1992). "A visualisation study of cross-flow around four cylinders in a square configuration" Journal o f Fluids and Structures, vol. 6, pp 109-131. Zdrackovich MM (1987). "The effects of interference between circular cylinders in cross flow" Journal of Fluids and Structures, vol. I, pp 239-261.

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