Development of high‐pressure composite butt‐weld joints

There is currently a need to develop high-pressure composite butt-weld joints to meet the needs of deepwater activities. In this study, a tapered butt-weld composite joint configuration is proposed. Finite element analysis was conducted to validate the proposed structural configuration through stress-strain distribution analysis. Test samples were assembled using the hand lay-up technique. The prepared specimens were hydro-tested. The test results justified the proposed joint configurations. An approximate 35.7% increase in bursting pressure in the tapered butt-weld composite joint was observed over currently used composite butt-weld joints.