Flexible Pipelines and Risers Seminar

Petroleum Safety authority Norway

•12.12.2007
Condition Monitoring Techniques for Flexible Pipelines
and Risers

• Reasons for riser condition monitoring

• Requirements for a monitoring system
• The NKTF optical monitoring system (OMS)
• Operating principle of the OMS
• OMS status and future developments

Flexible Pipelines and Risers 12.12.2007 2

Reasons for riser condition monitoring

• Greater operational safety.

• Possibility of reduced insurance premiums
due to the monitoring system.
• Measurement of actual riser fatigue loads.
• Measured fatigue data can be used to give
better calculation of remaining riser lifetime,
usually extending the service life of the riser.

Flexible Pipelines and Risers 12.12.2007 3

 Qualification Challenges
Inspection Techniques
• Conventional inspection techniques
• Visual inspection by diver/ROV
• Monitoring of temperature, pressure and by
bore fluid testing
• Monitoring using in-line mounted test coupons
• Gas sampling of riser annulus
• Vacuum testing of riser annulus
• Internal gauging
• Hydrostatic testing
• Radiography
• Eddy current
• New inspection techniques
• Fibre optic monitoring of stresses in tensile
armour (field implemented in 2005)
• On-line di-electrical sensing of test coupons
• X-ray/gamma-ray tomography
• Magnetic flux leakage

Flexible Pipelines and Risers 12.12.2007

Requirements for a condition monitoring system

• Precise measurement of riser strain distribution

• Preferably in the inner tensile armour layer
• Preferably in the bend stiffener area
• Correction for temperature drift if necessary
• No electrical leads
• No signal drift over time
• Lifetime as long as the pipe lifetime
• Chemical resistance to annulus environment

Conclusion: Only fiberoptics will work

Flexible Pipelines and Risers 12.12.2007 5

 The NKTF OMS

• Built-in fibre optical sensors in selected steel armour wires

• On-line measurement of pipe integrity during operation
• Monitoring of temperature
• Flow assurance
• Detection in case of water flooding of pipe annulus
• Monitoring of armour wire stresses
• Real-time wire stresses
• Updated calculation of remaining service life of the riser
• Detection of abnormal events
• Calibration of analysis tools (fatigue, lateral buckling)
• Development ongoing to monitor annulus environmental
condition

Flexible Pipelines and Risers 12.12.2007

The NKTF OMS (2)

• Fiberoptic wires embedded in the inner

tensile armouring layer
• Direct measurement in the most fatigue-
critical layer
• Measurement in the region with greatest
fatigue loads
• At least 32 separate sensing points
distributed as needed

Flexible Pipelines and Risers 12.12.2007 7

FBG strain sensing

λ B=neff Λ

Apply strain to fibre

FBG wavelength
Reflected

increases
light

Wavelength
Flexible Pipelines and Risers 12.12.2007
The NKTF OMS (3)

Flexible Pipelines and Risers 12.12.2007 9

 Full scale testing

• Radius of curvature ± 8.3 m

• Internal pressure 340 bar
• Axial tension 500 kN

Flexible Pipelines and Risers 12.12.2007

 Calibration of Fatigue Analysis Model

• Simulation using high level fatigue program

package BFLEX
• Non-linear shear interaction
• BFLEX calibrated against the NKT 8” full
scale dynamic fatigue test

Flexible Pipelines and Risers 12.12.2007

 Comparison between Predictions and
obtained Test Results

Small angles - no slip Large angles - full slip

Excellent agreement between simulated and measured stresses

- at all angles !

Flexible Pipelines and Risers 12.12.2007

Status

• One OMS already delivered for the

Norne field, one more underway in
the Alve field
• Full-scale testing carried out on
OMS system
• New and expanded full-scale test
coming up
• Work underway to make OMS an
'off-the-shelf' system

Future developments:
• Measurement inside the topside
endfitting
• Measurement along the entire fiber
length, giving better sensing
coverage
• Pressure and gas sensing

Flexible Pipelines and Risers 12.12.2007 13

Distributed fiberoptic strain sensing

• Weak scattering of light from

inhomogeneities in the fiber.
• Wavelength peaks can be observed
which shift with strain and
temperature.
• Allows continuous measurement of
parameters.
• Current laser quality only allows
spatial resolution down to 1 m in most
cases.
• Stimulated Brillouin scattering can
attain 10 cm spatial resolution, but
needs lasers at both ends.

Flexible Pipelines and Risers 12.12.2007 14

Fiberoptic gas sensing

• Nanoscale coating applied to a fiberoptic surface allows gases to change the index of
refraction within the fiber, thereby giving a measurable wavelength shift proportional to
the gas concentration.
• Sensing of H2 and chlorides has been demonstrated.
• Mostly still in the lab stage.

Flexible Pipelines and Risers 12.12.2007

 ?
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