Vortex-induced vibration of marine risers : motion and force reconstruction from field and experimental data

Vortex-induced vibration (VIV) of long flexible cylindrical structures enduring ocean currents is ubiquitous in the offshore industry. Though significant effort has gone into understanding this complicated fluid-structure interaction problem, major challenges remain in modeling and predicting the response of such structures. The work presented in this thesis provides a systematic approach to estimate and analyze the vortex-induced motions and forces on a marine riser, and develop suitable methods to improve riser VIV modeling and response prediction. In the first part of the thesis, a systematic framework is developed, which allows reconstruction of the riser motion from a limited number of sensors placed along its length. A perfect reconstruction criterion is developed, which allows us to classify when the measurements from the sensors contain all information pertinent to VIV response, and when they do not, in which case additional, analytical methods must be employed. Reconstruction methods for both scenarios are developed and applied to experimental data. The methods are applied to: develop tools for in-situ estimation of fatigue damage on marine risers; improve understanding of the vortex shedding mechanisms, including the presence of traveling waves and higher-harmonic forces; and estimate the vortex-induced forces on marine risers. In the second part of the thesis, a method is developed to improve the modeling of riser VIV by extracting empirical lift coefficient databases from field riser VIV measurements. The existing experiment-based lift coefficient databases are represented in a flexible parameterized form using a set of carefully chosen parameters. Extraction of the lift coefficient parameters is posed as an optimization problem, where the error between the prediction using a theoretical model and the experimental data is minimized.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Mechanical Engineering.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2008

Author dc:creator

• Mukundan, Harish

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Michael S. Triantafyllou and Franz S. Hover.

• Mechanical Engineering.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/44802

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/44802