Zhe Wang

Lateral buckling of exposed HPHT (high pressure and high temperature) subsea pipeline is an important aspect in detailed design. The snaked-lay method is an efficient control method of lateral buckling. In this study, a new shape of snaked-lay is proposed based on free Bezier curves. A method combining genetic algorithm (GA) and finite element analysis is applied to find the optimized curve section for the snaked-lay. The results show that the critical buckling force of the optimized shape is 15% lower than that of the traditional arc shape with the same out-of-straightness, which means it is easier to trigger lateral buckling at predetermined locations.