Applied Ocean Research 50 (2015) 4757

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Applied Ocean Research

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/apor

Assessment of offshore pipelines using dynamic lateral stability

analysis
Yinghui Tian , Mark J. Cassidy 1 , Chee Khang Chang
Centre for Offshore Foundation Systems and ARC CoE for Geotechnical Science and Engineering, The University of Western Australia, 35 Stirling Highway,
Crawley, WA 6009, Australia

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: On-bottom stability analysis of offshore pipelines is a challenging task and the design based absolute
Received 27 June 2014 static equilibrium often leads to a conservative pipe of heavy weight. Dynamic lateral stability analysis to
Received in revised form 20 October 2014 predict the pipeline behavior under a certain sea state is preferred by the pipeline engineering community.
Accepted 3 January 2015
This paper reviews the development of a new dynamic lateral stability analysis package. A systematic
Available online 24 January 2015
study of on-bottom stability analysis is then conducted using the developed package. The analysis results
are compared with authoritative design recommended practice and summarized as guidelines in form
Keywords:
of gures and tables. This allows a quick estimation of required pipeline weight in design.
Pipeline
On-bottom stability 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Dynamic lateral stability analysis
Force-resultant model
Hydrodynamic load

1. Introduction static equilibrium of forces acting on one representative segment

One of the most fundamental engineering tasks for offshore
pipeline design is securing on-bottom stability under the action of
hydrodynamic loads. Stability in this paper refers to the tendency
of pipeline not to displace laterally by more than a threshold value
under its anticipated storm loading. Nevertheless, pipeline stabil-
ity design is still in its infancy, as noted by White and Cathie [2].
The conservative nature inherent to the traditional design approach
(usually using a simplistic Coulomb friction model and Morisons
equation to appraise the pipes absolute static balance) often results
in a heavy pipeline or requires a secondary stabilization method,
which can consume up to 30% of the total pipeline capital expen-
diture, as Brown et al. [3] reported for projects in the North West
Shelf of Australia.
The authoritative design recommended practice DNV-RP-F109
[1], which was updated in 2010, recommends three offshore
pipeline on-bottom stability design approaches. In order of increas-
ing complexity, they are absolute lateral static stability (ALSS),
generalized lateral stability (GLS), and dynamic lateral stability
(DLS) analyses. The design philosophy of ALSS is based on the
Corresponding author. Tel.: +61 8 6488 7076; fax: +61 8 6488 1044.
E-mail addresses: yinghui.tian@uwa.edu.au (Y. Tian), mark.cassidy@uwa.edu.au
(M.J. Cassidy), 10649498@student.uwa.edu.au (C.K. Chang).
1
Tel.: +61 8 6488 3732; fax: +61 8 6488 1044.
of pipeline, at which the seabed resistance to the pipe should
be sufcient to withstand peak hydrodynamic loads. It is then
assumed that the pipe will experience no lateral displacement
under the design wave consideration. The GLS method is a set
of design gures and tables that are calibrated from numerical
and experimental analyses. An allowable displacement in a design
spectrum of oscillatory wave-induced velocities running perpen-
dicular to the pipeline is normally adopted. DLS requires a time
domain simulation of the pipelines dynamic response, including
the behavior of the pipe structure, modeling of pipesoil inter-
action, and the time variation of hydrodynamic loads [4]. DLS is
considered to be the most comprehensive method because a com-
plete three-dimensional pipeline simulation can be performed for
any given combination of waves and currents in time domain anal-
ysis. Unfortunately, DLS has not been widely used. Trnes et al.
[5] ascribed the reason for this lack of use to limited software
availability, causing a lack of motivation to replace the estab-
lished simplied methods in industry. There are only two DLS
packages available to public, developed decades ago: the Ameri-
can Gas Association (AGA) software package and PONDUS [6,7]. A
relatively new DLS package is SimStab [4,5,8], which is believed
to still use the traditional Morison equation to account for hydro-
dynamic loading and empirical pipesoil models, i.e. [9,10], to
evaluate soil resistance. More recently, Tian and Cassidy [1113]
and Tian et al. [14] conducted a series of studies and developed
an integrated uidpipesoil modeling DLS package by combin-

0141-1187/$ see front matter 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.apor.2015.01.001
48 Y. Tian et al. / Applied Ocean Research 50 (2015) 4757

Notation list

a water particle acceleration

Ci Fourier coefcient
D pipe diameter
d water depth
e elastic component (upper script)
F bounding surface
f bubble surface
FD drag force
Fig. 1. Pipe load and displacement conventions.
FH horizontal hydrodynamic force
FI inertia force
FL lift force In terms of pipeline on-bottom stability, submerged pipeline
FV vertical hydrodynamic force weight and hydrodynamic loads are two counter-balancing fac-
g plastic potential tors affecting the lateral displacement. DNV [1] proposed a
H horizontal component of resultant force dimensionless signicant weight parameter L, which is the ratio
HC H value of conjugate point between the submerged pipeline weight and a representative
HM H value of bounding surface center hydrodynamic load. Consequently, this unied parameter L can be
HN H value of bubble center directly related to the pipeline displacement and, by setting a dis-
Hs signicant wave height placement tolerance as the stability criterion, used to facilitate an
k wave number estimation of the required pipeline weight for a specied sea state
khe horizontal elastic stiffness (i.e. hydrodynamic loading).
kve vertical elastic stiffness This paper rst reviews the development of UWAINT by summa-
L signicant weight rizing the pipesoil interaction and hydrodynamic modules, which
m plasticity potential parameter are synergistically integrated into ABAQUS as user subroutines.
p plastic component (upper script) Then an analysis example is conducted to demonstrate the perfor-
r bubble surface size ratio mance of the package. However, the main focus of this paper is not
S() wave spectrum limited to introducing the development of a DLS package. Rather,
Tp peak period this paper aims to develop guidelines for pipeline on-bottom sta-
u horizontal displacement bility analysis based on the idea of adopting the unied signicant
Uc current velocity weight parameter L. By carrying out a systematic study employing
Ue effective velocity UWAINT, this paper establishes the relationship between unied
Us signicant velocity parameter L and corresponding pipeline displacement, which is
Uw water particle velocity hoped to give some insight into pipeline stability design for engi-
u average horizontal displacement neers.
V vertical component of resultant force
VC V value of conjugate point 2. Development of UWAINT
VM V value of bounding surface center
VN V value of bubble center UWAINT includes two in-house developed modules: pipesoil
V0 bounding surface size interaction (named UWAPIPE) and hydrodynamics (named
Ws submerged weight UWAHYDRO), which are implemented as user subroutines UEL
w vertical displacement and DLOAD into ABAQUS, respectively (see Dassault Systmes
kvp vertical plastic stiffness [19] for technical details). The pipesoil interaction mod-
bounding surface parameter ule (UWAPIPE) implements available force-resultant models
 scalar in hardening law [11,1416] as user-dened elements through the user subroutine
 hardening parameter UEL. The hydrodynamic loading module (UWAHYDRO) was coded
 bounding surface parameter to calculate hydrodynamic loading using an input wave spectrum or
t plasticity potential parameter specic sea state based on the Fourier model proposed by Sorenson
0 hardening parameter et al. [18].
w water density
i Fourier parameter 2.1. Pipesoil interaction module (UWAPIPE)
angular frequency
Fig. 1 illustrates the symbolic convention for loading acting on
a segment of a pipeline. The vertical component of the resultant
force is V = Ws Fv , where Ws is the pipeline submerged weight
ing state-of-the-art modeling techniques for pipesoil interaction and Fv is the vertical hydrodynamic loading. The horizontal com-
and hydrodynamic loading calculation. This DLS package, called ponent is H = FH , where FH is the horizontal hydrodynamic loading.
UWAINT in this paper, adopted advanced plasticity force-resultant Most pipesoil interaction models available in the literature are
pipesoil model (developed by Zhang [15] and Zhang et al. [16] based on the simplistic Coulomb friction concept, such as those of
and improved by Tian and Cassidy [11,17] and Tian et al. [14]) Wantland et al. [20], Brennodden et al. [21], and Wagner et al. [22],
and Fourier models (developed by Sorenson et al. [18]) to eval- and link H directly to V through only one simplistic friction fac-
uate soil resistance and hydrodynamic loading, respectively. The tor. Verley and Sotberg [9] and Verley and Lund [10] intended to
commercial nite element package ABAQUS was used to develop introduce an energy framework, but their models remain empir-
UWAINT due to its excellent nonlinear analysis ability and versatile ically based. More advanced force-resultant models have been
interfaces for linking user subroutines. presented in the last decade, allowing a more fundamental under-
 Y. Tian et al. / Applied Ocean Research 50 (2015) 4757 49

Table 1
Parameters and recommended values for UWAPIPE.

Parameter Dimension Explanation Value

0 Shape parameter for the yield surface ( with zero embedment) 0.4
 Gradient of parameter  with increasing depth 0.65
Shape parameter for the bounding surface 0.06
r Size ratio of the bubble to bounding surface 0.2
t Shape parameter in the plastic potential equation 0.6
m Exponent in the plastic potential equation 0.18
kve F/L/L Elastic stiffness of vertical loading (per unit length of pipe) 8000 kN/m/m
khe F/L/L Elastic stiffness of horizontal loading (per unit length of pipe) 8000 kN/m/m
kvp F/L/L Plastic stiffness of vertical loading (per unit length of pipe) 400 kN/m/m

standing of pipesoil behavior by relating the resultant forces (V, H)

directly to the corresponding displacement (w, u) within a plas-
ticity framework. Schotman and Stork [23] initially proposed the
force-resultant concept to pipesoil modeling. Subsequently, other
force-resultant pipesoil models have been presented by Zhang
[15], Zhang et al. [16], Calvetti et al. [24], Di Prisco et al. [25], Hodder
and Cassidy [26], Tian et al. [14] and Tian and Cassidy [17] through
experimental and numerical studies. Among these, Zhang [15] and
Zhang et al. [16] conducted geotechnical centrifuge testing at 50
times earth gravity with a pipeline model 1 m in diameter and 6 m
in length in prototype. The tested soil samples of calcareous sand
were collected from the North West Shelf of Australia. Three models
were derived from the centrifuge testing: the elastoplastic, bound-
ing surface, and bubble models, in increasing complexity, which
were highlighted by DNV [1] because they provide an understand-
ing of the complex pipesoil behavior on calcareous sand with a
more fundamental theoretical basis. The colloquially called bub-
ble model is essentially a two-yield-surface model. The inner yield
surface (bubble) expands or contracts by keeping a constant ratio
to the outer yield (bounding) surface. More importantly, the bub-
ble can translate inside but never intersect the bounding surface
according to a Mrz kinematic hardening law (see Mrz et al. [27]
for details). The advantage of adopting a bubble model is that the
cyclic behavior is able to be appropriately described while the tradi-
tional elasto-plastic model fails to account for the realistic behavior
Fig. 2. Plasticity model.
when the cyclic loading is inside the yield surface. This is essential
for pipesoil modeling as hydrodynamic loading is cyclic in nature
and the pipeline can accumulate displacement when the load- pipe under a purely vertical load, and r is the ratio of the size of the
ing is within the bounding surface. In UWAPIPE, Zhangs models bubble to that of the bounding surfaces. (VN , HN ) is the coordinate
were numerically improved and implemented in the time domain of the bubble center in VH load space.
nite element framework by Tian and Cassidy [1113] and Tian
et al. [14]. The following subsections detail the most comprehen- 2.1.2. Hardening law
sive bubble model of UWAPIPE with four constitutive components: Hardening of the two yield surfaces occurs by (i) isotropic hard-
yield surface, hardening law, ow rule and elastic behavior (see ening of the outer bounding and inner bubble surface and (ii)
[11,12,15,16] for more details). Table 1 shows typical model calcu- kinematic hardening of the inner bubble surface. The former is
lation parameters. directly correlated to the vertical plastic displacement wp as a
change in surface size:
2.1.1. Yield surface kve kvp
The bubble model comprises both an outer (bounding surface) V0 = wp (3)
kve kvp
and inner yield surface (bubble surface), which have same shape
 p
but different size. The bubble surface can travel inside but never  = 0 + w (4)
D
beyond the bounding surface according to a kinetic hardening law.
The equations for the bounding surface F = 0 and bubble surface f = 0 where kve and kvp are the vertical elastic (unloading) and plas-
are written as (see Fig. 2 for an illustration): tic (virgin loading) stiffness. 0 represents the value of  at zero
  V  embedment.  represents the gradient of  with embedment.
F = H   + (V0 V ) = 0 (1) Superscript p denotes a plastic component, and D is the pipe diam-
V0 eter.
   The kinematic hardening law guaranteeing that the bubble
  V VN 1+ 1+
f = H HN  
translates smoothly inside but never intersects or lies outside of
+ rV0 (V VN ) =0
rV0 2 2 the bounding surface, can be described as:
(2)      
VN VM  V 
 1r V VN
0
where  and are the aspect ratios dening the surface shape and = + +
HN HM V0  r H HN
size of the yield surface, V0 represents the bearing capacity of the
50 Y. Tian et al. / Applied Ocean Research 50 (2015) 4757

 
VC V
+  (5)
HC H

where subscripts M, N, and C represent bounding surface center M,

bubble center N, and conjugate point C of the current force, respec-
tively (see Fig. 2 for illustration). Following the form of Mrz et al.
[27], the three terms on the right side of Eq. [5] represent the move-
ment of the bounding surface center, the expansion of both the
bounding surface and bubble, and the drag of the bubble parallel
to the line connecting the current force and conjugate point. The
scalar  can be either explicitly evaluated according to the con-
sistency condition of the bubble surface or implicitly iterated to Fig. 3. Illustration of UWAINT integration.
integrate the constitutive equations (see [11,12] for more details).

2.1.3. Flow rule The total horizontal hydrodynamic load FH equals the superpo-
A non-associated ow rule was used to describe the pipe behav- sition of drag force FD and inertia for FI , i.e. FH = FD + FI , while the
ior on calcareous sands in the UWAPIPE model. The plastic potential vertical load FV is considered equal to the uplift force FL .
surface maintains a shape and position similar to those of the inner When the pipe experiences penetration, it becomes less exposed
yield surface (see [11] for details): to owing water, and, correspondingly, the hydrodynamic loads
V m tend to reduce. The hydrodynamic loads can further decrease when
 
g = H HN  t + (V0 V ) = 0 (6) the pipe movement is considered. UWAHYDRO has the option to
V0 account for the real-time pipe status of embedment and movement
and update the hydrodynamic loading accordingly.
where t and m are aspect ratios controlling the shape of the plastic
potential surface and HN is the ordinate of the inner bubble surface
center. 2.3. Integration of UWAINT

2.1.4. Elastic behavior With one UWAPIPE model simulating a small section of
The elastic relationship between the force increment and corre- pipesoil interaction, a three-dimensional long pipeline can be rep-
sponding elastic displacement increment is: resented by attaching numerous UWAPIPE models in a Winkler

   foundation style. As illustrated in Fig. 3, the pipeline structure
V kve 0 we is modeled as beam elements, and the UWAPIPE models attached
= (7) to the pipe nodes represent the surrounding soil behavior. Hydro-
H 0 khe ue
dynamic force distributes load acting at the pipeline and varies with
time and location.
where kve and Khe are elastic vertical and horizontal stiffness and
Fig. 4 illustrates the ow chart of the UWAINT package. UWAHY-
superscript e denotes an elastic component.
DRO reads the input parameters, including either wave spectrum
or direct wave velocity time series, which are then employed to cal-
2.2. Hydrodynamic loading calculation module (UWAHYDRO)
culate the three-dimensional time variation hydrodynamic loading
along the whole pipeline. This initial hydrodynamic loading, saved
In the hydrodynamic loading calculation module (UWAHY-
as a database for later use, is based on the assumption of zero
DRO), a three-dimensional ocean surface is rst generated using
pipeline embedment and movement. During the process of calcu-
a wave spectrum and spreading function. The water particle veloc-
lation, ABAQUS extracts hydrodynamic loading through the DLOAD
ity and acceleration are then evaluated at the pipeline level, or,
user subroutine from this database according to the time and pipe
alternatively, input velocity and acceleration time series can be
coordinates. If the option of real-time pipe status is switched on,
directly read in by the program. The Fourier model developed by
the extracted hydrodynamic loading is updated according to the
Sorenson et al. [18] was adopted in UWAHYDRO to calculate the
real-time embedment and movement. The UWAPIPE module com-
hydrodynamic loading on the pipeline. More advanced than the tra-
municates with ABAQUS by providing with the pipesoil model
ditional Morison equation (which is based on ambient ow velocity
stiffness and updating the plastic status via the user subroutine UEL.
and time-invariant coefcients), the Fourier models are proven to
More details of the integration algorithm of UWAPIPE and interac-
have better accuracy for the prediction of time-variable hydro-
tion with ABAQUS can be found in Tian and Cassidy [12,13,31].
dynamic forces on a subsea pipeline (see [4,2830]). The Fourier
model uses a composition of four harmonic sine waves to calculate
the drag force FD and lift FL on a pipeline for irregular waves: 2.4. An analysis example

1 
4
An analysis example is conducted here to demonstrate the
2
FD,L (t) = w DUw C0 + Ci cos i(t i ) (8) developed UWAINT DSL package. In this example, a pipeline is
2
i=1 modeled as length of 1.25 km, diameter D of 1 m and wall thick-
ness of 0.05 m. The pipe structure is modeled as beam elements,
where is the angular frequency, w is the water density, t denotes
with the element length evenly set as 5 m, which results in 250
time, Uw is the water particle velocity, and Ci and i are the Fourier
beam elements with 251 nodes. This element size was veried to be
coefcients. The inertia force FI in the Fourier model is calculated
adequately accurate through a parametric study performed by Tian
same as in the traditional Morison formulation but with a xed
et al. [32]. The pipe material is considered elastic, with a Youngs
inertia coefcient value of 3.29:
modulus of 2100 MPa and Poissons ratio of 0.3. UWAPIPE mod-

FI (t) = 3.29 w D2 a (9) els are attached to each node of the beam element, that is, 251
4 UWAPIPE user-dened elements are used in this analysis. The cal-
where a is the water particle acceleration. culation parameters of the UWAPIPE models are shown in Table 1.
 Y. Tian et al. / Applied Ocean Research 50 (2015) 4757 51

Fig. 4. Flow chart of UWAINT.

Fig. 5. Time series of water particle velocity at pipeline midpoint.

Fig. 6. Hydrodynamic loading history at the pipeline midpoint.

52 Y. Tian et al. / Applied Ocean Research 50 (2015) 4757
Fig. 7. Hydrodynamic loading along the pipeline at 1.5 h of storm.
Fig. 8. Resultant load at the pipeline midpoint.
The pipe submerged weight Ws is set at 5 kN/m, and the initial size
of each UWAPIPE model is taken as 2Ws (to mimic the pipeline lay-
ing process resulting in a larger vertical load at the touch down
zone, see [33] for details). A 3-h (10,800 s) storm sea state is gen-
erated using the JONSWAP spectrum, where the signicant wave
height Hs = 14.5 m and peak time Tp = 14.2 s, which represents a
100-year return period storm. A steady current Uc = 1 m/s is consid-
ered to superpose on the wave-induced water ow, and the water
depth was set at 120 m. As an illustration, Fig. 5 shows the gener-
ated water particle velocity (including wave-induced velocity and
steady current) at the midpoint of the pipeline. Fig. 6 illustrates the
time variation of hydrodynamic loading at the pipeline midpoint
calculated from Fourier model. A snapshot of the generated hydro-
dynamic loading along the pipeline, FH and FV , at 1.5 h (5400 s) of
the storm is depicted in Fig. 7.
The resultant loading (V = Ws FV , H = FH ) and initial bounding
surface corresponding to the pipeline midpoint are plotted in Fig. 8.
Straight lines representing a friction factor of 0.6 (the widely used
value for sandy seabed, as suggested in [1]) are also shown in the
gure. In Fig. 8, the time of occurrence of several peak loads was
selectively labeled, for example, t = 1199, 1200, 4363, and 6091 s. As
implied from this gure, if the traditional static stability analysis
is used to appraise the pipe stability using the pipeline midpoint
section to represent the whole pipeline, the pipeline would be
regarded as instable because of the occurrence of resultant loads
exceeding the friction line. Consequently, secondary stabilization
methods would be required to secure the pipelines absolute static
stable status, which inevitably increases expenditure dramatically.
In contrast, the following DLS simulation using UWAINT conducts
a time-domain dynamic analysis of the whole pipeline to predict
the pipe displacement. If the displacement is deemed allowable,
the expensive secondary stabilization can be saved.
The calculated lateral displacement and vertical embedment
along the whole pipeline are shown in Fig. 9, which illustrates the
pipeline conguration at the rst, second, and third (end of the
storm) hours of the 3-h storm. The lateral displacement can be
observed to increase with the storm duration, whereas the embed-
ment does not change signicantly. In this paper, average lateral
displacement u is proposed to describe the lateral displacement
of the whole pipeline, which is dened as the lateral displacement
u value averaged over the whole pipeline. In this example, u is cal-
culated as 2.8D at the end of the storm. If this displacement is less
than the stability criterion set by the operators (for example, 10D
in [1]), then this pipeline can be deemed as stable.
The displacement history of the two pipe ends and midpoint
is illustrated in Fig. 10. Comparing the lateral displacement at the
midpoint with the hydrodynamic loading (shown in Fig. 6), we can
see that the abrupt increase of lateral displacement corresponds
to the loading peaks in Fig. 6(a), which implies that the pipeline
lateral displacement mainly occurs at the moment of peak lift and
drag loading.
3. DLS analysis cases
The advantage of DLS analysis lies in its time domain dynamic
simulation and direct observation of pipeline displacement history.
The running efciency of UWAINT DLS analysis, nevertheless, is
low, and the preceding example consumes approximately 20 h to
run the 3-h storm analysis on a desktop computer (2.5 G CPU, 8 GB
memory). Due to the limit efciency and lack availability of DLS
to public, it is not practically possible for pipeline engineers to run
numerous DLS simulations with all possible combinations of waves
and currents in design work. Thus, it would be a helpful reference to
pipeline engineers to develop pipeline stability guidelines to relate
the unied parameter L and pipeline displacement, by conducting
a systematic study using the DLS package.
In this paper, many UWAINT DLS simulations were conducted
with systematically varying submerged pipe weights (WS ) and
wave parameters (HS , TP , and d), in order to develop relationship
between average lateral displacement u and signicant weight L.
Table 2 describes the 11 analysis scenarios, where each scenario
represents a specic sea state of HS , TP , and d. Scenarios 14, 58,
and 911 represent the return period of 100, 50, and 10 year storms
with varying water depths. According to the report of McConochie
et al. [34] for the North West Shelf of Australia, the signicant wave
height HS and time period Tp corresponding to 100, 50, and 10 year
return periods could be taken as examples at HS = 14.5, 13.6, and
10.1 m and TP = 14.2, 13.4, and 12.9 s, respectively. A constant steady
current velocity Uc = 1 m/s is considered in all analyses of this study.
 Y. Tian et al. / Applied Ocean Research 50 (2015) 4757 53

Table 2
Analysis scenario.

Scenario Return period (years) Hs (m) Tp (s) d (m) Us (m/s) 0.5w D(Us + Uc )2 (kN/m) Ue (m/s) Ws (kN/m) L
u/D

1 100 14.5 14.2 70 1.29 2.69 2.07 6 2.23 235.90

8 2.97 50.774
10 3.71 12.370
15 5.57 0.930
20 7.42 0.134
25 9.28 0.017
30 11.13 0.004
35 12.99 0.001
2 80 1.08 2.21 1.72 5 2.27 229.011
8 3.62 14.622
10 4.53 3.234
15 6.80 0.256
20 9.06 0.024
25 11.33 0.003
30 13.59 0.001
3 90 0.90 1.85 1.44 5 2.70 88.675
8 4.33 3.819
10 5.41 0.891
15 8.12 0.052
20 10.83 0.004
24 12.99 0.001
4 120 0.53 1.20 0.84 2.5 2.07 160.291
3 2.49 67.482
5 4.15 2.797
8 6.63 0.114
10 8.29 0.015
13.5 11.20 0.001
2.5 2.07 160.291
5 50 13.6 13.4 70 1.17 2.41 1.89 6 2.49 142.110
8 3.32 26.943
10 4.15 6.293
15 6.23 0.528
20 8.30 0.066
30 12.45 0.002
6 80 0.97 1.99 1.56 5 2.53 133.131
8 4.04 6.983
10 5.05 1.621
15 7.58 0.121
20 10.11 0.010
25 12.63 0.002
7 90 0.80 1.66 1.30 4 2.41 165.218
5 3.01 46.805
8 4.81 1.860
10 6.02 0.450
15 9.02 0.020
20 12.03 0.002
8 100 0.67 1.43 1.08 3 2.10 258.524
5 3.51 14.816
8 5.61 0.566
10 7.01 0.115
15 10.52 0.003
20 14.03 0.001
9 10 10.1 12.9 65 0.82 1.70 1.36 4 2.35 186.190
5 2.93 56.390
8 4.69 2.958
10 5.86 0.785
15 8.80 0.050
20 11.73 0.004
21 12.31 0.003
10 70 0.74 1.55 1.22 4 2.58 102.861
5 3.23 29.022
8 5.16 1.456
10 6.45 0.368
15 9.68 0.017
20 12.90 0.002
11 80 0.60 1.31 0.98 3 2.29 123.159
5 3.82 6.964
8 6.12 0.365
10 7.64 0.076
15 11.47 0.002
16 12.23 0.001
54 Y. Tian et al. / Applied Ocean Research 50 (2015) 4757

Fig. 9. Pipeline conguration.

Fig. 10. Displacement at the pipeline midpoint.

In each scenario, 57 analysis cases are simulated by varying the
pipeline submerged weight Ws (72 analysis cases in total for the 11
scenarios, see Table 2).
According to DNV [1], signicant wave velocity Us , represent-
ing the wave velocity of a certain sea state, is dened as:

2
Us = 2 2
S()d (10)
0 sinh (kd)
where k is the wave number, d is the water depth, and S() is the
wave spectrum (JONSWAP was used in this study). The signicant
wave Us of the preceding example is calculated as 0.534 m/s and
plotted in Fig. 5 by superposing the steady current Uc = 1 m/s as
an illustration. The signicant wave velocity Us of each scenario
is calculated as shown in Table 2. Also tabulated in Table 2 is the
calculated item 0.5w D(Us + Uc )2 , which is a representative value
of the hydrodynamic loading.
representing the movement
The average lateral displacement u,
of the whole pipeline, is extracted at the completion of the 3-h
storm DLS analysis, which is also tabulated in Table 2.
4. Calculation results
From Table 2, a contour plot of average displacement u
versus submerged pipeline weight Ws and hydrodynamic item
0.5w D(Us + Uc )2 is depicted in Fig. 11. The solid dots correspond to
all the analysis cases shown in Table 2 and contour lines of u/D =
[0.5, 1, 5, 10, 20, 50, 100, 200] shown in the gure represent the
corresponding normalized displacement range. If the stability cri-
terion is taken as 10D, for instance, the region under the contour
line u/D = 10 can be deemed as an adequate design. The consistent
 Y. Tian et al. / Applied Ocean Research 50 (2015) 4757
Fig. 11. Contour plot of lateral displacement.
trend of the contour lines of this gure is evident to suggest that
the counter-balance between pipeline weight and hydrodynamic
loading governs the stability. Following DNV [1], the signicant
weight parameter L is dened as:
Ws
L=
0.5w D(Us + Uc )2
Consequently, the signicant pipe weight L of each simu-
lation case can be evaluated using the corresponding Ws and
0.5w D(Us + Uc )2 . The calculation results of L are tabulated in
Table 2, which suggest that signicant weight parameter L sub-
stantially determines the pipeline displacement u/D, regardless of
particular values of pipe weight and sea state. Fig. 12 (with u/D in
log scale) shows the relationship between L and u/D, where the
curve of DNV [1] is also shown for comparison. In Fig. 12, all Lu/D
curves from the 11 calculation scenarios fall within a narrow band,
implying that the results of UWAINT analyses are consistent. When
the signicant pipe weight L is less than 4 (the corresponding lateral
displacement can be observed to be larger than 8D), close agree-
ment between this study and DNV [1] can be seen. The difference
between this study and DNV [1] is within an order of magnitude
Fig. 12. Relationship between signicant weight and lateral displacement.
55
Fig. 13. Effect of updating hydrodynamic load with real-time pipe status.
when L = 48. When L > 8, the pipeline displacement is predicted by
DNV [1] to be around 0.30.7D while this study gives less than 0.1D.
This difference is essentially quite small and thus considered to be
insignicant in engineering scale. The inset of Fig. 12 is in linear
scale. The calculated results of the 11 scenarios are shown as dots
while the DNV [1] is the solid line. This inset can be used to visually
(11)
observe the difference between this study and DNV [1].
DNV [1] is believed to use traditional Coulomb friction with
a constant friction factor and passive resistance component to
describe pipesoil interaction. This study employs an advanced two
yield surface kinetic hardening bubble model to describe the soil
behavior within a plasticity force-resultant model framework. As
explained in Tian and Cassidy [35], under signicant loading the
plasticity force-resultant pipesoil model develops into a critical
sliding state, and thus the pipe starts to slide on the seabed when
the pipe weight is relatively light compared with the hydrodynamic
loading. In this circumstance, the behavior of the UWAPIPE model
is quite similar to the traditional Coulomb friction model used in
DNV [1]. This explains the close agreement when L < 4 (the hydro-
dynamic loading is relatively large compared with pipe weight).
When the pipe weight is large, however, the bounding surfaces of
UWAPIPE models can accommodate the majority of the resultant
loads (see Fig. 8 for illustration), and the pipe lateral displacement
tends to be limited. In this case, a sliding Coulomb friction model
is not appropriate to describe the pipe behavior any more. From
this meaning, the DNV [1] is thought to be conservative due to the
adoption of the Coulomb friction model for all circumstances.
As mentioned above, UWAHYDRO has the option to update the
hydrodynamic loading according to the pipe location and veloc-
ity in real-time. In the above analyses, this feature was not used,
and the hydrodynamic loading was based on the assumption of
zero embedment and movement (i.e. the loads on a hypothetical
pipe that remained stationary at the sea bed surface). To further
demonstrate the effect of accounting for real-time pipe status, sce-
nario 1 was rerun by activating this option in UWAHYDRO. As
compared in Fig. 13, the average lateral displacement decreases
signicantly when the embedment and movement of the pipe is
accounted for. For instance, the average lateral displacement is pre-
dicted as 12.37D at L = 3.71 in scenario 1 while a displacement of
2.35D is obtained when the real time hydrodynamics are accounted
for. In reality, the gain from embedment reduces the exposure of
the pipeline to hydrodynamic loading and tends to become more
stable. In other words, neglecting the real-time effect tends to lead
to a conservative estimate.
56 Y. Tian et al. / Applied Ocean Research 50 (2015) 4757
Fig. 14. Effect of storm building up.
In the offshore environment, storms take a period of time to
develop into their peak ferocity. In tropical storms, for instance, this
building-up can take approximately 20% of the total storm dura-
tion [1]. This effect is investigated here by applying a linear ramp
function to the wave-induced particle velocity and acceleration.
Scenario 1 is rerun by allowing the velocity and acceleration to lin-
early ramp up in the rst 0.6 h. The calculation results are compared
in Fig. 14, which shows the storm building-up slightly reduces the
average lateral displacement. This is reasonable because relative
small hydrodynamic load at storm building up stage are expected
to be within the initial bounding surface (see Fig. 8 for illustra-
tion). Consequently, hardening (expansion) of the bounding surface
occurs, which is benecial for gaining embedment and thus lateral
resistance capacity.
5. Discussion
It should be noted that a set of wave spectrum parameters (Hs ,
Tp , and d) only produces a single value of signicant wave velocity
Us according to Eq. [11]. However, different wave time series and
hydrodynamic loads can be numerically generated if varying ran-
dom seeds are allowed. It is noteworthy that a xed random seed
was used in this paper, which was derived from the previous study
of Youssef et al. [36]. It corresponded to the median random seed of
the 100 waves generated. The consistency of Fig. 11 validates that
the adoption of this median random seed is appropriate to describe
the seastate in general.
To represent an arbitrary wave time series (which can be numer-
ically generated using different random seeds or any input waves
without necessarily knowing the spectrum parameters), this paper
proposes a concept of effective velocity Ue , which can be directly
calculated from wave time series and does not need to derive from
spectrum parameters any more. To calculate Ue , the maximum
velocity at each pipe node is rst extracted over the whole storm
duration, which is then averaged along the whole pipeline:
Ue = Average[Max(Unode,time ; time = 010, 800 s); node = 1251]
(12)
where Unode,time is the data base of wave velocity varying with node
and time (bearing in mind there are 251 pipe nodes and storm
duration is 10,800 s).
The effective velocity Ue of the wave time series in this papers 11
calculation scenarios are listed in Table 2. The relationship between
Fig. 15. Signicant wave velocity Us and effective velocity Ue .
Ue and Us is interestingly found to be almost linearly related as
shown in Fig. 15:
Us = 0.62Ue (13)
For any wave time series, the effective velocity Ue can be evalu-
ated without knowing the spectrum parameters or random seed (if
generated numerically). Eq. [13] can be used to estimate signicant
wave velocity Us and thus Fig. 12 can be used to estimate pipeline
stability.
6. Concluding remarks
This paper reviews the development of an offshore pipeline
dynamic lateral stability package and demonstrates its perfor-
mance using an analysis example. A total of 72 analysis cases were
conducted, representing example 100, 50, and 10 year return period
tropical storms on the North West Shelf of Australia, and the results
were compiled to determine the relationship between pipe signi-
cant weight L and average lateral displacement u. Good agreement
with DNV [1] implies the reliability of the developed DLS package.
The effects of pipe embedment and storm building-up were also
discussed in this paper. These are hoped to provide some insight for
pipeline engineers for offshore pipeline on-bottom stability design.
The pipe stability is an integrated problem, with interactions
between hydrodynamics, structural dynamics and soil mechanics.
This paper aimed to take a balanced approach to each, providing a
level of numerical sophistication to each, but without compromis-
ing one over the other. However, simplifying assumptions were still
required. Firstly, the initial UWAPIPE model, developed by Zhang
[15] and Zhang et al. [16], mainly concentrated on the validation
against experiments with lateral pipe displacements less than half
diameter. Using the parameters of Tian et al. [14] and Tian and Cass-
idy [17] can extend up to 5D. The analyses presented here therefore
simplify soil-pipe response for large displacements. Secondly, no
axial load or resistance was considered in the analysis. Thirdly, all
the calculation cases in this paper are at relatively shallow water
depth, where the wave loading is signicant.
This paper only introduced the pipesoil interaction model
accounting for calcareous sand condition based on Zhang [15],
Zhang et al. [16], Tian et al. [14] and Tian and Cassidy [17]. In fact,
the UWAPIPE module has already incorporated a pipesoil interac-
tion model for clayey soil, i.e. the model developed by Hodder and
 Y. Tian et al. / Applied Ocean Research 50 (2015) 4757
Cassidy [26]. This allows the UWAINT package to be able to also
model pipeline stability on clayey soils.
Acknowledgements
This research has received support from the Research Develop-
ment Awards of University of Western Australia, AustraliaChina
Natural Gas Technology Partnership Fund and The Lloyds Register
Foundation. The Lloyds Register Foundation supports the advance-
ment of engineering-related education and funds research and
development that enhance the safety of life at sea, on land, and in
the air. The work also forms part of the activities of the Centre for
Offshore Foundation Systems (COFS), currently supported as a pri-
mary node of the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence
for Geotechnical Science and Engineering.
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