Basic formulas for Offshore Construction Professionals

Edition: 2 / Issued: June 15, 2017

Mohamed Hermas, MIMechE, CEng

Abstract
This article provides a collection of formulas in use for field/project engineers, who work offshore permanently
or occasionally. The equations presented are those employed in everyday activities. As a field engineer, you
must already know some of them, but probably not all. Learning these equations eases your work
tremendously and improve the overall performance of your organization in many ways.

1. Lifting
1.1. Two leg slings
When using two slings, the tension in each sling can be computed as follows:

= 0.5 1
where T is the predicted tension, w is the load weight, and is the lifting angle. See Figure 1.

Figure 1
Tip: Each one of the chosen slings must have an SWL (for a single lift) equal to or greater than the calculated
tension above.

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1.2. Four leg slings
You can obtain the tension in each sling of the 4-legged wire rope, knowing w, l, a, and b as follows:

= 0.25. 2 2
0.252 0.252
where w is the load weight, l is the sling length, and a & b are the length & width of the load. See Figure 2.

Figure 2

2. Survey
The distance between any two points defined by their Cartesian coordinates can be obtained by the
Pythagorean theorem. This can also be applied to the GPS coordinates. For example, if we have the easting
and northing of the startup head and the laydown head, we can get the distance between them.
If the startup head coordinates are, say, E1 and N1, and the laydown head coordinates are E2, and N2, the
distance between them, d will be:

= (2 1)2 + (2 1)2 3
This is the same form of the Pythagorean law in x and y as shown in Figure 3.

Figure 3

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3. Spoolpiece installation
The theory of the subsea spoolpiece size depends on defining the dimensions of a triangle, knowing one
side and two angles. The triangle, shown in Figure 4, is initially constructed by drawing the line
representing the taut wire length c. Then, the other two lines are drawn from the two ends of the taut wire
making angles r and p representing the riser and the pipeline angles respectively. These two lines will
meet in one vertex with the angle , which represents the bend angle.

Figure 4
c, r, and p are obtained by the diver and of course, = 180 (r + p)
Consequently, we know four parameters, namely, c, r, p, and .
Substituting in the law of sines as follows:

= = 4

we can obtain lr and lp, which are the two spoolpiece sides.
4. Pigging
The time taken for a pig run can be roughly estimated as the quotient of the total volume of water divided
by the volumetric flow rate.
This can be expressed as follows:
2
= 5

where t is the pig run time, r is the pipe inner radius, l is the pipeline length, and Q is the flow rate.
Care should be taken to unify the units, e.g., pipe length cannot be in meters, while the diameter is in inches.
5. Welded riser installation
In cases where we have a welded riser to be installed at a jacket with sloping legs, the bend angle is
calculated as follows.

cos = cos . cos 6

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where is the bend angle, is the pipeline approach angle, and is the jacket batter angle.
See Figure 5 to check the definition of each angle. It is to be noted that if you define the angles different
than the below figure, the equation must be altered accordingly.
As seen, is not equal to , unless the pipeline is approaching straight into the platform face, in which case,
= 0 or, in other words cos = 1. On the other hand, if = 90 (i.e., the pipeline is parallel to the platform
face), then cos = 0, consequently, cos = 0, in which case = 90.
Tip: This equation shows clearly the impact of the pipeline approach direction on the bend angle, which
means that is not necessarily equal to as some may wrongly assume.

Figure 5

6. Center of gravity
As an example, we will calculate the center of gravity (COG) of the plate shown in Figure 6 (so that we can
subsequently identify the location of two padeyes for lifting it)
First, establish a coordinate system at one corner as shown. Then, discretize the shape into parts for which
it is easy to obtain the COG. In doing so, we may either look at it as three shapes as depicted in Figure 6 or,
one big rectangle missing a triangle as shown Figure 7. We will first discuss the first method.
Assuming a uniform thickness and a homogeneous material, the COG will be located at the centroid. With
that in mind, we first get the centroid coordinates of each shape as follows (see Figure 6):
2
1 = 3
1 = + 3 7

2 = + 2 2 = + 2 8

3 = 2
3 = 2 9
Then calculate the area of each shape as follows:
1 = 0.5 2 = 3 = 10
Consequently, the centroid of the entire shape can be computed as follows:
= 1.1+2.2+33
11
1+2+3

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Similarly,
1.1+2.2+33
=
1+2+3
12
This is expressed as the sum of the moment of areas of all parts divided by the sum of areas.

Figure 6
Alternatively, we can calculate the centroid coordinates by the other method, but in that case, the triangles
parameters (part 2) will take a negative sign as shown below (see Figure 7):
= 1.12.2
13
12
1.12.2
=
12
14

Figure 7

7. Final laydown
The pipeline length needed to lay down a pipeline in the correct location depends on the pipeline gain,
which is normally provided by the pipelay analysis.
The gain is the horizontal distance the laydown end reaches beyond the point where it was upon starting
the laydown operation. Looking at Figure 8, if we lay it down at some location, the pipeline end will not be
located at point a; rather at point b. This is because the true length of the pipeline profile (from the
touchdown to the beadstall) is longer than the horizontal projectionthat difference is what we refer to
as the gain.

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 Figure 8
Consequently, when we are approaching the design laydown location (approximately 100 m away), the
exact pipe length required should be equal to the theoretical horizontal distance with the gain subtracted
from it. The result will give us the location where the barge should stop to start laying down; see Figure 9.
This can be expressed as:
= 15
where l is the required pipe length, d is the theoretical horizontal distance, which can be obtained by
equation = (2 1)2 + (2 1)2 (see Survey section), and g is the pipeline gain, which is given
by the pipelay analysis.

Figure 9

8. Cable Catenary
The general equation for the cable catenary is as follows.

0
= cosh 1 16
0
where T0 is the tension horizontal component, and w is the unit weight of the cable (in N/m).

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This equation represents the cable profile expressing the height above the seabed, y, as a function of the
horizontal distance, x, from the touchdown point (the origin).
T0 is equal to Ttop.cos , where Ttop is the top tension and is the hang off angle.; see Figure 10. Both Ttop
and are typically controlled physically, thus known, particularly if the catenary is a pipeline.
Alternatively, T0 can be expressed as (Ttop wytop), in cases where we dont know the hang off angle, . (e.g.,
when the catenary is an anchor wire). ytop is the maximum height of the catenary ( the water depth).
The horizontal projection of the catenary is obtained from:
0 1
cosh 1 17
0

The suspended length of the catenary can be expressed as:

0
18
0

Once all the parameters are known, the cable catenary, expressing as y=f(x), can be plotted by a
spreadsheet.

Figure 10

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