Development of a Failure Detection System for Flexible Risers

摘要

In the past few years there have been a number of in-service flexible risers which have failed offshore. Due to the significant environmental, safety, and physical cost of a flexible riser failure occurring, an integrity management system is required by the industry to safeguard the risers currently in operation. The majority of the known cases of critical damage to flexible risers concern the armor wires at the top section of the riser. This paper presents the results of the laboratory test conducted with a bank of sensors installed on a flexible riser test piece under tensile load. The test was conducted in order to detect damage to the armor wires using non-invasive sensors and to help understand the process of flexible riser failure. An additional offshore test was conducted in order to validate the proposed system under offshore conditions. This will increase confidence in the ability to predict potential failure and improve riser system integrity. The tests show that it is possible to detect and identify armor wire failures.