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This paper describes a multi-pronged continuous improvement effort to manage the spans of a deep-water pipeline, where even without wave action, the currents are strong enough to move sediments, leading to constantly changing spans. The effort includes: (1) using strakes rather than intermediate supports to suppress VIV, since the latter proved not to be a long-term solution, (2) using partial rather than full strake coverage of spans and developing tools to quantify the level of strake coverage that is required, (3) improving estimates of soil stiffness and damping, and tools to handle amplitude-dependent soil stiffness and damping, (4) performing pluck tests of the operating pipeline by pulling it laterally at midspan with the ROV until a weak link connecting the ROV to the pipe breaks, whereupon the resulting motion of the pipe is recorded with accelerometers, (5) developing tools that allow fatigue damage to be estimated and accumulated for every location along the pipeline (6) sponsoring a joint industry program by DNVGL to quantify the effect of seabed proximity and trench effects on VIV. This paper provides an overview of these activities, with emphasis on recent results and new assessment tools and methods developed and their validation covering items (2–4) above.

Helical strakes can suppress vortex-induced vibrations (VIVs) in pipelines spans and risers. Pure in-line (IL) VIV is more of a concern for pipelines than for risers. To make it possible to assess the effectiveness of partial strake coverage for this case, an important gap in the hydrodynamic data for strakes is filled by the reported IL forced-vibration tests. Therein, a strake-covered rigid cylinder undergoes harmonic purely IL motion while subject to a uniform “flow” created by towing the test rig along SINTEF Ocean's towing tank. These tests cover a range of frequencies, and amplitudes of the harmonic motion to generate added-mass and excitation functions are derived from the in-phase and 90 deg out-of-phase components of the hydrodynamic force on the pipe, respectively. Using these excitation- and added-mass functions in VIVANA together with those from experiments on bare pipe by Aronsen (2007 “An Experimental Investigation of In-Line and Combined In-Line and Cross-Flow Vortex Induced Vibrations,” Ph.D. thesis, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway.), the IL VIV response of partially strake-covered pipeline spans is calculated. It is found that as little as 10% strake coverage at the optimal location effectively suppresses pure IL VIV.

Excitation and added mass functions determined from forced vibration tests of a rigid cylinder undergoing harmonic motion in the flow are used in the semi-empirical software VIVANA to predict the VIV response of pipelines. An advantage of this approach, as opposed to the more-commonly-used response function approach, is that it can account for changing conditions along the length of the pipe, like changing current velocity, seabed proximity, and/or pipe diameter. This makes it useful for pipelines as well as for risers when such changes occur. Further, for pipelines, travelling wave effects play less of a role than for risers, so the VIVANA approach can be simplified by assuming the phase angle of the harmonic response is constant along the span. The interactions between cross-flow and in-line response that complicate the prediction of cross-flow VIV by the excitation function approach, do not arise for pure inline VIV. For the latter case, using the pure in-line forced vibration test data of Aronsen (2007), it is found that both VIVANA approach and simplified ‘SIVANA’ approach thereof predict VIV amplitudes consistent with experiments on flexible pipe (Ormen Lange umbilical VIV tests), and the DNVGL-RP-F105 response function for a range of structural and soil damping values. In a companion paper, this approach is applied partially strake-covered pipeline spans, to show that a relatively small fraction of well-placed strake coverage is enough to suppress in-line VIV.

A series of experiments is performed in which a strake-covered rigid cylinder undergoes harmonic purely in-line motion while subject to a uniform “flow” created by towing the test rig along SINTEF Ocean’s towing tank. These tests are performed for a range of frequencies and amplitudes of the harmonic motion, to generate added-mass and excitation functions are derived from the in-phase and 90° out-of-phase components of the hydrodynamic force on the pipe, respectively. Using these excitation- and added-mass functions in VIVANA together with those from experiments on bare pipe by Aronsen (2007), the in-line VIV response of partially strake-covered pipeline spans is calculated. It is found that as little as 10% strake coverage at the optimal location effectively suppresses pure in-line VIV. Further advantages of strakes rather than intermediate supports to suppress in-line VIV include: strakes are not affected by the scour which can lower an intermediate support (in addition to creating the span in the first place). Further they do not prevent self-lowering of the pipeline or act as a point of concentration of VIV damage as the spans to each side of the intermediate support grow again.