Proceedings of the Third (2009) International Deep-Ocean Technology Symposium Beijing, China, June 28-July 1, 2009 Copyright 2009

9 by The International Society of Offshore and Polar Engineers (ISOPE) ISBN 978-1-880653-73-9

Conceptual Analysis of Stinger for Ultra-deepwater S-lay

Lin Wang
Fabrication Sub-company, China Offshore Oil Engineering Co. Ltd., Tianjin, China

Xiangfeng Zhang, Wei Lv, Qianjin Yue

Department of Engineering Mechanics Dalian University of Technology, Dalian, China

Ning He, Lei Zhou

Engineering Technology Center, China Offshore Oil Engineering Co. Ltd., Tianjin China

ABSTRACT
As a traditional offshore pipelay technology, S-lay is still frequently utilized even in the deep water pipelays. It has two important devices: stinger and tensioner. Stinger controls the overbend of pipeline. Its geometry, length, and curvature, are the function of water depth, lay tension requirement and geometry and material of the pipeline. In this paper, an analytical method and the finite element methods are presented for researching the relationships of these parameters. Suggestions on the conceptual design of a novel deepwater stinger and the upgrade of an actual stinger have been provided as a favor of decision-making.

it is divided into the overbend on stinger and the sagbend from lift-off point to touch down point on the seabed, as shown in Fig. 2. The curvature of the overbend is controlled by 6 to 14 rollers installed on the stinger. The rollers are normally spaced in 5 to 10 m. The sagbend curvature is controlled by tension at the tensioner on the lay-barge.

KEY WORDS: pipelay; pipeline; stinger; S-lay; ultra-deepwater. INTRODUCTION

As the exploration of oil and gas resources goes into deep and ultra deep water, subsea pipeline installation in such area has become a real challenge. Nowadays, S-lay and J-lay are two important pipelay techniques, which have made great success in shallow and moderate water depth respectively. It once seemed that J-lay is the only choice for deep water pipelay, but recently, to keep project costs low and still meeting the challenges of pipeline installation, S-lay has been made break through based on the improvement of equipment capacities. These equipments include stinger, tensioner, and dynamic positioning system. These enhancements make the S-lay in ultra deep waters possible (Vermeulen, 2000). Other successful deep and ultra deep water pipelays were conducted by S-lay vessels Lorelay and Solitaire. They have laid the 12/14 inch pipeline into 932 meters in Oil Export Pipeline project in 1991, and laid the 8/12 inch pipeline in the water depth of 1676 meters in 2001. Even more success in 2005, they laid the 8/10 inch pipeline into 2750 meters in the Gulf of Mexico, and so on. The pipelay depth for S-lay is shown in Fig. 1. In the case of S-lay, there are several working stations located on the lay-barge, and pipes are welded, coated and tested horizontally, then pipe string passes through the stinger suspended from the back of barge into water in nearly a vertical slope. It is finally laid on the seabed. The configuration of the pipeline during laying process resembles S, and

Fig. 1: The Lay Depth Using S-lay Technique In the deep and ultra deep water, large tension and high curvature stinger are required in order to achieve the nearly vertical departure. Such setup can lead to large plastic deformation in overbend area. How to design the geometry of the stinger to prevent pipeline in the overbend form (plastic) collapse becomes extremely challenging. This is also a main focus of this study. As an efficient pipelay technique, S-lay has always being the focal point of offshore industry. A great deal of efforts has been carried into execution. Firstly, design and safety analysis of pipeline became the main tasks in early research using numerical and finite element methods (Kruppa and Clauss, 1976; Heedo, 2004), and then the configuration of pipeline during S-lay was studied by means of singular perturbation technique (Guarracino, 1999). Lately, parameters analysis of S-lay, such as water depth, tension and stinger, was put forward (Daley, 1974; Zhu, 1997). In these studies, the stinger was supposed to be articulated stinger controlled by buoyancy, which is so different from the stinger controlled by given equipment, such as A-frame or S-

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