In offshore applications there are elements that can be modeled as long beams, such as umbilical cables, flexible and rigid pipes and hoses, immersed in the seawater, suspended from the floating unit to the seabed. The suspended part of these elements is named “riser” and is subjected to the ocean environment loads, such as waves and sea current. This work presents a structural geometrically-exact 3D beam model, discretized using the finite element method for riser modeling. An updated Lagrangian framework for the rotation parameterization has been used for the description of the exact kinematics. The goal is to perform a complete static analysis, considering the oceanic loads and the unilateral contact with the seabed, extending the current standard analysis for situations in which very large rotations occurs, in particular, large torsion. Details of the nonlinear 3D model and loads from oceanic environment are discussed, including the contact unilateral constraint.
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