• Journal of the Society of Naval Architects of Korea
• /
• v.55 no.4
• /
• pp.289-296
• /
• 2018

The offshore subsea platforms are connected to subsea pipelines to transport gas/oil from wells. The pipe is a multilayered structure of polymer and steel for compensating both flexibility and strength. The pipe also requires reinforcement structures to endure the extreme environmental conditions. A vertebrae structure of bend restrictors is one of the reinforcement structures installed to protect the subsea pipe from excessive bending deformations. In this study, structural behaviors of the subsea pipeline with bend restrictors are investigated by the multi-body contact analysis in Abaqus 6.14-2. Contact forces of each bend restrictor extracted from the multi-body contact analysis can be boundary conditions for topology design optimization in Altair Hyperworks 13.0 Hypermesh-Optistruct. Multiple design constraints are considered to obtain a manufacturable design with efficient material usage. Through the multi-body contact analysis with optimized bend restrictors, it is confirmed that the bending performance of the optimized design is enhanced.