Experimental and numerical investigation of hydrodynamic coefficients of subsea manifolds

ABSTRACT

Hydrodynamic coefficients of subsea manifolds are significant parameters in predicting dynamic responses during deep-water installation. To calculate these coefficients, a series of model tests of the drag coefficients of a typical subsea manifold with eight slots were carried out at Zhejiang University. A numerical simulation was performed using the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) method, and the Navier–Stokes equations were solved to obtain the drag and added mass coefficients. On the prediction of drag coefficient, a similar tendency was found for both the numerical and experimental results, proving the accuracy and reliability of the proposed CFD method. The effects of variables such as the Keulegan-Carpenter (KC) number and frequency of forced oscillation on the added mass coefficients were analysed. The added mass coefficients increase nearly linearly as the KC number increases, but the oscillation frequency has little influence on the added mass coefficients.

KEYWORDS:

• Hydrodynamic coefficients
• subsea manifold
• model tests
• computational fluid dynamics

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the National Key Research and Development Plan of China (grant number 2016YFC0303701), the 111 Project (B18054) and China National Science and Technology Major Project (grant number 2016ZX05033-004-003).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

ORCID

Menglan Duan http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5656-7725

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Key Research and Development Plan of China (grant number 2016YFC0303701), the 111 Project (B18054) and China National Science and Technology Major Project (grant number 2016ZX05033-004-003).