meizitang http://www.sandmanagement.com/

What is SAFEBUCK?

Summary of SAFEBUCK - originally featured in Offshore Engineer magazine, March 2010

SAFEBUCK Phase III - Scope of Work
Verification of the reliability of the design methodology, with the aim of reducing unnecessary conservatism in design.

Collection and sharing of data and lessons learned from operating pipelines on recent projects without sharing potentially sensitive project specific data.

Formalisation of the SAFEBUCK Design Guideline into an Industry Recommended Practice.

SAFEBUCK GEO - Scope of Work
The development of a new ‘force-resultant plasticity model’ to run inside standard software packages, which will capture our considerable experience from modelling and testing lateral pipe-soil interaction. This approach will fundamentally improve the way that lateral pipe-soil response is addressed in design.

A detailed review of axial friction response, based on recent project-specific tests, supplemented by additional JIP tests, to improve our understanding and quantify key uncertainties that influence cyclic expansion and pipe-walking.

About The Project

The challenge addressed by SAFEBUCK is that pipelines want to buckle due to the compressive forces created by internal pressure and temperature. Historically the offshore industry has trenched and buried pipelines to restrain them and prevent buckling. However, in deeper water, trenching and burying is less practical and with the higher operating pressures and temperatures that we often experience in deepwater developments, this solution simply does not work.

The aim of the SAFEBUCK Joint Industry Projects is for our industry to work together, to support research and development that will increase our knowledge and our confidence in applying innovative solutions to what is a significant engineering challenge. That knowledge is captured in the SAFEBUCK Design Guideline, which enables engineers to design pipelines that are deliberately encouraged to buckle, but in a controlled way. By controlled initiation of lateral buckles at regular intervals, the loads are shared and reduced at each buckle site.

Lateral Buckle from seabed side scan survey (either version)

Lateral Buckle from seabed side scan survey

SAFEBUCK has saved costs in a variety of different ways including shorter design times, avoiding over-conservative design solutions, reduced installation costs and mitigating against operational issues and potential failures, with the obvious impact on production losses and the environment.