This paper presents a significant methodology advancement that addresses one of the industry's most challenging problems: the accurate prediction of detailed local stresses in unbonded flexible risers. Flexible risers exhibit highly nonlinear dynamic behavior due to the stick/slip interaction between the pipe wall layers in compliant systems that undergo large threedimensional translations/rotations. Practical, accurate prediction of critical flexible pipe component responses requires an efficient method capable of incorporating detailed flexible pipe models into a global nonlinear dynamic analysis. Current industry practice is a two-step global/local approach involving a global nonlinear analysis with 1D centerline models, which may include bending hysteresis effects, followed by local analysis of a detailed model segment to the global results to predict critical response items such as armour wire stresses. A Nonlinear Dynamic Substructuring (NDS) framework is developed that expands the classical methods of dynamic substructuring and component-mode synthesis to geometrically and locally nonlinear problems. This evolution/integration of capabilities enables the computationally efficient inclusion of detailed flexible pipe models into, and recovery of detailed response/stress time-histories directly from, the global nonlinear analysis itself. The NDS methodology is benchmarked against published work involving the large deformations static and dynamic global analysis of a flexible riser. The full potential of the method is then demonstrated by efficiently incorporating 3D detailed flexible pipe substructure models, with bending hysteresis, into a global system nonlinear analysis and recovering stress time-histories in tensile armour layers.
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