Simplified Finite Element Models to Study the Dry Collapse of Straight and Curved Flexible Pipes

Dry collapse is one of the possible failure modes of flexible pipes. It refers to the situation in which no damage occurs in the flexible pipe external sheath. In this scenario, all layers of the pipe withstand the external pressure loading in a deep-water application. Such a situation is addressed in this work, which proposes some simplified modeling techniques to represent straight and curved flexible pipes subjected to external pressure, undergoing dry collapse during simulation procedure. The results of the proposed models are compared to other reference results, from a fully three-dimensional (3D) finite element model. Good agreement has been got, even with the proposed simplifications with a large reduction in computational cost when compared to full 3D model.