The Effect of a Fatigue Failure on the Wellhead Ultimate Load Capacity

Author(s):  
Lorents Reinås ◽  
Morten Sæther ◽  
Bernt Sigve Aadnøy

A subsea well will experience external loading during drilling operations that can lead to the development of a fatigue fracture in the primary load bearing structural members of the upper well construction. Such a fatigue fracture can occur at several fatigue hotspots which all are located in the upper part of a subsea well. There are two main load sharing structural members; the outer tubular string named the conductor (structural) casing and the next tubular string named the surface casing. Both these strings have a circumferential load bearing weld close to the top. The load sharing between these 2 tubular strings are affected by the supported weight from further tubular strings placed inside the well. This paper discusses the residual ultimate load capacity of a typical North Sea subsea well assuming that a fatigue fracture has developed. The discussion is based on FEM analysis results where a fully developed fatigue fracture has been introduced to the analytical model of a typical well either to the conductor part of the well or to the surface casing string. Then the residual ultimate load capacity is evaluated assuming a fully developed fatigue fracture. Evaluations presented herein can be important and necessary tools in considering the consequences of a possible fatigue failure of a subsea well. A reduction in ultimate load capacity due to a fatigue fracture may reduce the safety margin should an accidental or extreme loading occur. The results indicate that the location of the potential fatigue failure is important when assessing the residual ultimate load capacity. If the factored fatigue life of a subsea well is approaching its limit the presence of a fatigue fracture should be assumed. The most prudent approach would then be to perform a permanent P&A operation of the well. Planning of such operations should comprehend the possibility of reduced structural capacity of the well due to a fatigue fracture. This paper also discusses the results in an operational context. The applied methodology is outlined and illustrative results are presented from a typical North Sea well.

1967 ◽  
Vol 93 (3) ◽  
pp. 259-267
Author(s):  
Marek Janas ◽  
Lance A. Endersbee ◽  
M.L. Juncosa ◽  
K.V. Swaminathan ◽  
A. Rajaraman

2020 ◽  
Vol 857 ◽  
pp. 162-168
Author(s):  
Haidar Abdul Wahid Khalaf ◽  
Amer Farouk Izzet

The present investigation focuses on the response of simply supported reinforced concrete rectangular-section beams with multiple openings of different sizes, numbers, and geometrical configurations. The advantages of the reinforcement concrete beams with multiple opening are mainly, practical benefit including decreasing the floor heights due to passage of the utilities through the beam rather than the passage beneath it, and constructional benefit that includes the reduction of the self-weight of structure resulting due to the reduction of the dead load that achieves economic design. To optimize beam self-weight with its ultimate resistance capacity, ten reinforced concrete beams having a length, width, and depth of 2700, 100, and 400 mm, respectively were fabricated and tested as simply supported beams under one incremental concentrated load at mid-span until failure. The design parameters were the configuration and size of openings. Three main groups categorized experimental beams comprise the same area of openings and steel reinforcement details but differ in configurations. Three different shapes of openings were considered, mainly, rectangular, parallelogram, and circular. The experimental results indicate that, the beams with circular openings more efficient than the other configurations in ultimate load capacity and beams stiffness whereas, the beams with parallelogram openings were better than the beams with rectangular openings. Commonly, it was observed that the reduction in ultimate load capacity, for beams of group I, II, and III compared to the reference solid beam ranged between (75 to 93%), (65 to 93%), and (70 to 79%) respectively.


2018 ◽  
Vol 65 ◽  
pp. 08010
Author(s):  
Je Chenn Gan ◽  
Jee Hock Lim ◽  
Siong Kang Lim ◽  
Horng Sheng Lin

Applications of Cold-Formed Steel (CFS) are widely used in buildings, machinery and etc. Many researchers began the research of CFS as a roof truss system. It is required to increase the knowledge of the configurations of CFS roof trusses due to the uncertainty of the structural failures regarding the materials and rigidity of joints. The objective of this research is to investigate the effect of heel plate length to the ultimate load capacity of CFS roof truss system. Three different lengths of heel plate specimens were fabricated and subjected to concentrated loads until failure. The highest ultimate capacity for the experiment was 30 kN. The results showed that the increment of the length of the heel plate had slightly increased the ultimate capacity and strain. The increment of the length of the heel plate had increased the deflection of the bottom chords but decreased the deflection of the top chords. Local buckling of top chords adjacent to the heel plate was the primary failure mode for all the heel plate specimens.


2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zongfen Zhang ◽  
Chris Chen ◽  
Gregory Zywicki ◽  
Brad Blaski ◽  
James Blenman

2010 ◽  
Vol 168-170 ◽  
pp. 632-636 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xia Ping Liu ◽  
Shu Tang ◽  
Chun Hui Tang ◽  
Zuo Yong Yang ◽  
Zuo Sun

This paper deals with the ultimate load capacity test on 14 short columns of separation concrete-filled steel tubes (CFST) which are subjected to the eccentric compression on separate side. The experimental parameters include the separation ratio and the eccentricity ratio. The result shows that the separation ratio and the eccentricity ratio will influence the load capacity of the components of the concrete-filled steel tubes which are subjected to the eccentric compression. The confinement of steel tubes to core concrete will be continuously weakened and the ultimate load capacity of the components will be decreased obviously with both the separation ratio and the eccentricity ratio increasing gradually.


2012 ◽  
Vol 594-597 ◽  
pp. 730-733 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hua Zhi Li ◽  
Zhe Liu ◽  
Jia Yong Miao

The tube and coupled scaffold is widely used in the construction of building, bridge, sports stadium etc, due to the advantage of easily assembling, high load capacity and good overall stiffness. However as a very important temporary structure in the construction, the semi-empirical method has been used for the calculation of ultimate load capacity (ULC), whether the calculation results are acceptable is not given too much attention. To ascertain the safety of using process, the FEM code-Midas is used to investigate and compare the stability and ultimate load analysis method of scaffold, and the impacting factors, such as the span, step distance, height, and width of scaffold, are discussed, the varying process and trend is described in this paper.


2003 ◽  
Vol 30 (4) ◽  
pp. 437-471 ◽  
Author(s):  
S.M. Basha ◽  
R.K. Singh ◽  
R. Patnaik ◽  
S. Ramanujam ◽  
H.S. Kushwaha ◽  
...  

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