Bend stiffener model with one nodal system

The input to this model can be found in the example folder, under case E002.

A section of flexible pipe with bend stiffener is defined. The model is rigidly fixed in all degrees of freedom at the top/root of bend stiffener. The pipe is exposeed to

tension applied at the lower end
external and internal pressure
bending; applied by transverse loading at the lower end

Figure 1. Bflex model

Model description

The model, see Figure 1, consists of thermal layers, carcass and zeta spiral that are specified based on the cross sectional area and with no detailed geometry. In addition to the crossection flexcross used to describe the pipe, an additional crossection is introduced to model the bend stiffener:

#		     name         type      nbnode  node  id         od        no_th  rks  imno_i  imno_o
CROSSECTION  MYBENDCROSS  NLBENDSTIFF-BEND  1       1     0.260E+03  1.5E+03   10     0.1  MATIN   MATOUT
                                           31      31     0.260E+03  0.3E+03   10     0.1  MATIN   MATOUT
#

The bend stiffener is connected to the same nodes as the pipe itself. By selecting type nlbendstiff-bend, no axial and torsional stiffness is introduced from the bend stiffener, only bending stiffness is accounted for.

A separate node systems could have been used applied for the bend stiffener cross section, and type nlbendstiff selected. Then the axial and torsional contribution of the bend stiffener would have been accounted for. In this case contact elements between the the pipe and the bend stiffener must also be included.

Results

The curvature profile is obtained by glplot from bflex2010post, and shown at maximum displacement in Figure 2.

Figure 2. Curvature profile

Relevant files

Go to bflex2010 file

Go to bflex2010post file

User manual for reference

Processing of files from command line

bflex2010 -n bflex2010_01
bflex2010post -n bflex2010post_01

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