Flexible Pipe Armour Wire Termination With Annular Wire Guidance
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing methods for terminating flexible pipe bodies in end fittings often result in non-uniform stress distribution and orientation of tensile armour wires, leading to potential failure due to overstretching and uneven curvature.
Innovation Solution
The use of an annular element with a guiding surface to bend and orient tensile armour wires uniformly, and a mechanism to clamp the wire ends between the annular element and a collar member, ensuring consistent curvature and stress distribution.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If conventional termination methods are used without guiding surfaces, then the termination process is simpler, but the tensile armour wires exhibit non-uniform orientation and stress distribution leading to potential failure
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces an annular element with a guiding surface as an intermediary component between the collar member and the tensile armour wires. This guiding surface mediates the orientation process by providing a controlled path for the wires to follow, ensuring uniform curvature and stress distribution without requiring complex active control systems.
Solution Approach 2:
The annular element with the guiding surface performs preliminary action by pre-orienting the tensile armour wires to a desired uniform curvature before final termination. This preliminary orientation ensures that wires are properly aligned and stress-distributed prior to being secured by the collar member, preventing later failure.
2Manufacturing precision
If annular element with guiding surface is used to orient wires uniformly, then wire orientation and stress distribution improve, but the device complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent applies local quality by providing a guiding surface with specific geometric properties (arcuate shape with controlled radius of curvature) only at the critical location where wire orientation is needed. The annular element maintains simple geometry elsewhere, and the guiding surface is positioned precisely where it is needed to control wire curvature without adding complexity to the entire device.
Data Source
AI summary
A method and apparatus for locating respective end regions of wires of an armour layer of a segment of flexible pipe body at a respective desired positions in an end fitting, and apparatus for terminating a segment of flexible pipe body in an end fitting are disclosed. The method comprises providing an annular element radially around an exposed region of an armour layer, of flexible pipe body, that comprises a plurality of wires; locating the annular element against a terminal end of a first collar member disposed radially around the armour layer; bending the wires away from a longitudinal axis of the flexible pipe body against a guiding surface of the annular element, at a predetermined location; urging the annular element away from the first collar member in a first direction; and gripping the wires between an abutment region of the guiding surface and a cooperating abutment surface of a further collar member thereby locating respective end regions of the wires at respective desired positions in an end fitting.