Lateral deflection operations consist in the deflection of a pipeline, resting on the seabed, until it is ready to be connected to a subsea oil production structure. This work presents the numerical methods and strategies employed in the development of a computational system for the simulation and analysis of such operations, involving severe geometric nonlinear effects due to large displacements. The following aspects are addressed: Representation of the pipeline; Anisotropic friction in the soil-pipeline interaction; Three-dimensional behaviour, and representation of the chain-buoy assembly in "off-bottom" operations; and the adequate representation of the pull-in cable. The study of the final connection to the subsea structure is also addressed. The quality of the numerical simulation obtained from the application of this computational system is assessed in an illustrative example, where the results are compared with those obtained from an experimental small-scale model test.
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