It’s important to improve the sealing performance of the inner packer in deepwater pipelines, which is an emergency sealing and oil control equipment. The deformation characteristics and sealing stress conditions of the packer’s sealant cylinder are analyzed, and the hyperelastic constitutive model is determined based on uniaxial tensile experiments. The effective contact stress and effective contact range between the rubber cylinder and the pipe wall are the main parameters for evaluating the sealing performance. Through simulation, it was found that the rubber cylinder on the force application side plays a major sealing role, and severe stress can lead to shoulder protrusions. The location of fatigue damage on the rubber cylinder’s shoulder is consistent with the sea trial. Therefore, special-shaped rubber cylinders with different structures are designed to address the shoulder protrusion. The simulation shows that the sealing performance of the right-angled trapezoidal double-layer rubber cylinder with force applied on the slope side(S-RARC) is significantly better than the original rubber cylinder(ORC), and it does not produce shoulder protrusions.
The first fractal model for the loading–unloading process between two cylindrical surfaces with friction is presented. The nonlinear relation between the real contact area and the contact load in different deformation stages are deduced for a load–unload cycle. The impacts of parameters in the model are discussed. The numerical results show that for a given dimensionless contact load, the dimensionless real contact area of the loading–unloading process of cylindrical contact surface with friction, as well as the differences of the dimensionless real contact area between the loading and unloading processes, increase with the increase of the loading interference and fractal dimension, decrease of the profile scaling parameter and curvature radius, or the substitution of external contact for internal contact.
In the field of underwater emergency maintenance, submarine pipeline cutting is generally performed by a diamond wire saw. The process, in essence, involves diamond grits distributed on the surface of the beads cutting X56 pipeline steel bit by bit at high speed. To find the effect of the different parameters (cutting speed, coefficient of friction and depth of cut) on cutting force, the finite element (FEA) method and response surface method (RSM) were adopted to obtain cutting force prediction models. The former was based on 64 simulations; the latter was designed according to DoE (Design of Experiments). Confirmation experiments were executed to validate the regression models. The results indicate that most of the prediction errors were within 10%, which were acceptable in engineering. Based on variance analyses of the RSM models, it could be concluded that the depth of the cut played the most important role in determining the cutting force and coefficient the of friction was less influential. Despite making little direct contribution to the cutting force, the cutting speed is not supposed to be high for reducing the coefficient of friction. The cutting force models are instructive in manufacturing the diamond beads by determining the protrusion height of the diamond grits and the future planning of the cutting parameters.
The wave energy, as a clean and non-pollution renewable energy sources, has become a hot research topic at home and abroad and is likely to become a new industry in the future. In this article, to effectively extract and maximize the energy from ocean waves, a vertical axisymmetric wave energy converter (WEC) was presented according to investigating of the advantages and disadvantages of the current WEC. The linear and quadratic equations in frequency-domain for the reactive controlled single-point converter property under regular waves condition are proposed for an efficient power take-off (PTO). A method of damping coefficients, theoretical added mass and exciting force are calculated with the analytical method which is in use of the series expansion of eigen functions. The loads of optimal reactive and resistive, the amplitudes of corresponding oscillation, and the width ratios of energy capture are determined approximately and discussed in numerical results.
This paper proposed a concept prototype of the arm-claw-type manipulator with a general purpose support vessel for the rapid salvage of deep submergence vehicles, aircraft, satellites, etc. The key functions were realized, including object clamping, claw butting and locking, position and posture adjustment, awareness, positioning, and navigation. The prototype was successfully tested in a lake environment on a hollow and cylindrical object. The arm-claw-type manipulator is suitable for the rapid salvage of cylindrical objects in an underwater environment to minimize the clamping force and possible clamping damage on the object being salvaged. Four propeller thrusters with a symmetrical arrangement can be used for the adjustment of position and posture in underwater environments, to match the orientation of the object. Cameras capture the profile images of the underwater salvage object and can be used for posture adjustment, but in dark, deep-water environments, sonar can be used in the place of underwater cameras.
18 January 2023 in Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, Part C: Journal of Mechanical Engineering Science
With the exploitation of marine resources, the development of maintenance operation technology for subsea pipelines transporting oil and gas has become the focus worldwide. Diamond bead wire serves as important engineering equipment in subsea pipeline maintenance, and the study of the wear mechanism of diamond grains on the beads is key to improving the cutting efficiency and lifetime of diamond bead wire. In this work, a theoretical model of the mechanical wear rate of the diamond grain was established, and a simulation model of the diamond grain cutting X65 pipeline steel was developed by applying smoothed particle hydrodynamics method. By studying the effects of the cutting factors of the diamond grain on mechanical wear, the mechanisms of adhesive wear, abrasive wear, and fatigue wear were clarified. The results indicate that the diamond grain in line contact or large surface contact with X65 steel contributes more to wear rate reduction than point contact; The mechanical wear rate predominated by adhesive wear and abrasive wear of the diamond grain increases with the increase of cutting speed and depth. And when the cutting speed is 22–26 m/s and the depth is 20–30 μm, the growing trend of the mechanical wear rate turns gentle, which is more suitable to balance improving cutting efficiency and reducing mechanical wear.