The Effect of Soil Non-Linearity on VIV Response of a Free Spanning Pipeline

Improving the knowledge about the effect of pipe-seabed-interaction on VIV is quite important for free spanning pipelines, which are often highly nonlinear due to interaction with the seabed. However, the implicit requirement for frequency domain procedures is structural linearity. In this study, a time domain analysis method for nonlinear pipe-seabed-interaction analysis of free spanning pipelines under VIV conditions has been developed. The flow is modeled by a Van-der-Pol wake oscillator developed by Facchinetti et al. And the stall parameter is taken into account in the general form of the VIV amplitude and the response frequency, which can successful model the VIV response amplitude comparing with a constant. After the free spanning pipeline discretized into finite elements, the average acceleration method is chosen to integrate the equations of motion. Three types of pipe-seabed-interaction (linear spring, perfectly plastic nonlinear spring, and tension cut-off nonlinear spring) are considered. The results show that the presented time domain method can capture the non-linear interaction between the pipeline and the seabed at the free span shoulders. And the maximum response amplitude of nonlinear case is lower than the one with linear spring.