Dynamic Properties of Steel Catenary Riser near Touchdown Point Under Coplanar Vessel Heave and Vortex Induced Vibration

The present study establishes a simple numerical model for the coupled response of a steel catenary riser (SCR) subjected to coplanar vessel motion and vortex-induced vibration (VIV). Owing to the large deflection of the SCR, the geometric nonlinearity is considered in this model. The hydrodynamic force comprises the excitation force and hydrodynamic damping, where the excitation force that only exists when the non-dimensional frequency is located in the lock-in range, is associated with the VIV. The hydrodynamic force model is validated based on the published VIV test data. As for the seabed resistance at the touchdown zone (TDZ), integrated with an initial seabed trench, the hysteretic feature is modeled. Based on the model, the study emphasizes on the coupled response characteristics near the touchdown point (TDP) induced by coplanar vessel heave and VIV, and analyzes the sensitivity of the coupled response to the heaving amplitude and frequency. It is found that with the increase of the heave amplitude and frequency, the VIV can be obviously mitigated, but the heave-related response in the coupled analysis seems to be close to that in the heave-only simulation. Finally, the fatigue damage near TDP is parametrically investigated based on the separate analysis and the coupled analysis. The results demonstrate that the coupled effect plays a significant role in the fatigue assessment near TDP. Besides, the proportion of the coupled effect accounting for the total fatigue damage decreases with the increasing seabed stiffness, while increases with the increasing seabed trench depth.