Pipes and tubular conduits – Combined – With means to support disparate element therein
Reexamination Certificate
2002-10-24
2004-03-09
Hook, James (Department: 3752)
Pipes and tubular conduits
Combined
With means to support disparate element therein
C138S109000, C138S112000, C138S114000, C138S148000, C285S123150
Reexamination Certificate
active
06701967
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a device having a radial partition, especially for arresting the propagation of a radial buckle in a double-walled pipe consisting of two, respectively inner and outer, coaxial metal tubes separated by an annular space, this pipe being a rigid pipe for transporting fluids such as hydrocarbons, and intended for very greater depths.
2. Relevant Art
A rigid pipe or tube is laid on the seabed usually from a so-called pipelaying gauge. The laying is called S-laying when the pipe adopts the shape of an S between the pipelaying gauge and the seabed and it is called J-laying when the pipe adopts the shape of a J. In the latter case, a guide ramp is provided on the pipelaying gauge, which ramp may sometimes be partially immersed in the water.
The rigid pipe to be laid is stored on the pipelaying gauge either in pipe sections of a given but relatively short length, the pipe sections being joined together as the laying progresses, or it is wound as a great length on a reel, the pipe then being unreeled from the reel during the laying operation. These laying operations are described in the API (American Petroleum Institute) document “Recommended Practice 17 A” from 1987.
When the pipe has left the gauge and while the pipe is being laid, it is important that the latter undergoes no plastic deformation in bending, which would result in ovalization of the pipe causing a “week singularity” which would be conductive to the initiation of a collapse. Moreover, when the pipe is laid on the seabed at great water depths (typically greater than 300 m and possibly up to 2000 m and more), the hydrostatic pressure exerted on the pipe may be sufficient to initiate a radial buckle which has a tendency to propagate as a wave along the pipe, in both directions. Of course, the buckle will form preferentially at a “weak singularity” when one exists on the pipe. When the buckle occurs, it is then necessary to replace at least that section or portion of the pipe comprising the buckled or collapsed region. The buckle propagation pressure is given by the formula:
26×&sgr;
0
×(
T/D
)
2.5
where &sgr;
0
is the yield stress of the steel, T is the thickness of the pipe and D is the external diameter of the pipe. To resist the propagation of a buckle, the corresponding pressure must be greater than the hydrostatic pressure.
To prevent the propagation of a local buckle or local buckles, it has been proposed to provide the pipe with certain devices or means, called buckle arrestors. The API Recommended Practice 1111 gives various recommendations and formulae which indicate from which depth the arrestors are recommended, necessary or strictly indispensable.
Such devices are firstly proposed within the context of single-walled rigid pipes.
According to a first solution, a cylinder is placed inside the pipe. Thus, it is proposed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,747,356 to link a cylinder to a cable, to lodge the cylinder inside a pipe section and then to simultaneously unreel the pipe and the cable so as to keep the cylinder in the pipe section while the latter is being laid, until the pipe comes into contact with the seabed. The cylinder is then brought back up so as to be lodged in another pipe section to be laid, which is joined to the previous section. Consequently, any buckle likely to occur, when laying the pipe, between the pipelaying gauge and the seabed is immediately arrested and therefore not allowed to propagate along the pipe sections. However, such an arrangement provides no solution or effectiveness for arresting buckles likely to be propagated after the pipe has been finally laid on the seabed.
According to a second solution, an inner, or preferably outer, reinforcing collar (possibly in two parts, constituting a “clamp”) is used. Thus, in U.S. Pat. No. 3,768,269, it is proposed to locally increase the stiffness of the pipe by placing, at regular intervals, for example at intervals ranging between 100 m and 500 m, reinforcing collars whose length ranges between 1 m and 2.5 m. Such a solution is valid only for pipes laid in sections since the reinforcing collars can be mounted and fastened in the factory to the pipe sections and then transported by the pipelaying gauge to the laying site. When the pipe is long and would onto a storage reel, it then becomes virtually impossible to wind the pipe with its reinforcing collars onto a reel since they would result in straight or almost straight portions that cannot be deformed when winding the pipe onto the storage reel. In order to mitigate this difficulty, it is conceivable to mount and fasten the reinforcing collars during the laying operations. However, it would then be necessary to interrupt the laying, at regular intervals, so as to mount and fasten the reinforcing collars. According to an alternative solution known through this same patent or through documents GB 1,383,527 or U.S. Pat. No. 5,458,441, the localized reinforcement may take the form of a thicker intermediate sleeve welded to the ends of the pipe.
According to a third solution, a spiralled rod is used on the external wall of the pipe. Thus, to allow the pipe to be wound onto a reel, U.S. Pat. No. 4,364,692 proposes to wind a rod tightly around the pipe so as to form a certain number of turns which can be welded at their ends to the rod itself and/or to the pipe.
According to another embodiment, the turns may be individual turns, by welding their two ends and regularly spacing them apart along that portion of the pipe to be reinforced. As long as the pipe is a single-walled pipe, the increase in the diameter in the reinforced portions may be acceptable. However, when the pipe is of the double-walled or pipe-in-pipe type, that is to say comprising an external tube or liner pipe which is slipped over the internal tube, the increase in the diameter of the liner tube is unacceptable when transporting and storing long lengths of double-walled pipe.
In addition, when the rigid pipe to be laid is manufactured in long lengths on land and then wound onto a reel on the pipelaying gauge, the solutions recommended in the aforementioned documents are not appropriate as they use either long reinforcing collars, having a length of about 1 to 2.5 m, as in U.S. Pat. No. 3,768,209, or the winding of a reinforcing rod around the rigid pipe, as in U.S. Pat. No. 4,364,692.
For the purpose of solving these problems and of obtaining double-walled pipes that can be wound, despite the propagation arrestors, the Applicant has already proposed particular devices.
According to Application FR 99/08540, a portion of flexible pipe is welded to the internal wall of the external tube in order to form a flexible propagation arrestor.
According to Application FR 99/15216, the propagation arrestor consists of an annular compartment filled with resin which is injected before or during the laying and which can be cured only after the laying if the length of the compartment for the resin is too great to allow winding in the cured state.
In the field of double-walled metal pipes, devices of various kinds are known which are placed between the inner and outer coaxial tubes and which are not intended to arrest the propagation of a buckle, but rather to form compartments, to serve as a spacer or to join several sections of pipe together. For example, end-blocking systems, or bulkheads, for double-walled rigid pipes exist and are described especially in WO 96/36831 and WO 98/17940. Such bulkheads cannot be likened to propagation arrestors since the elastic material from which they are produced is not capable of transferring the stresses applied to the external tube on the internal tube.
Also known in a very different field, that of double-walled thermoplastic pipe assemblies, for example from documents U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,141,260 and 4,786,088, are radial-partition spacers between the two walls which make it possible to prevent the problems associated with the differential expansion of the two walls, which may cause axial distortions that these spacers can
Bell Mike
Louis Bill George
Coflexip
Hook James
Ostrolenk Faber Gerb & Soffen, LLP
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