Isogeometric contact analysis in subsea umbilical and power cables

TL;DR

This paper introduces an isogeometric analysis approach for contact problems in subsea cables, enhancing accuracy and efficiency in stress simulation of complex contact interfaces compared to traditional methods.

Contribution

It develops a novel IGA contact algorithm in MATLAB for dynamic subsea cable analysis, validated against ABAQUS, and discusses factors affecting its performance.

Findings

IGA provides accurate contact property predictions.

The MATLAB implementation is efficient and validated.

Element refinement improves analysis stability.

Abstract

Subsea umbilical and power cables contain a large number of contact interfaces between different geometries and materials. These complex interactions rise significant challenges for accurately considering contact surface properties by using traditional analytical solutions or finite element methods. These properties have been identified as the most sensitive parameters when performing the numerical simulation for stress analysis. Therefore, it is essential to apply a novel approach for contact analysis which improves the accuracy and efficiency for predicting contact properties. This paper presents an isogeometric analysis (IGA) approach addressing contact problems in dynamic umbilicals and power cables. Firstly, this isogeometric contact algorithm is formulated in MATLAB as a tool including the geometry description, contact detection and penalty function. Secondly, the contact interface between a steel tube and an outer sheath in an dynamic umbilical is established by this IGA contact algorithm and validated against that in ABAQUS for proving the accuracy and efficiency of IGA. Finally, the effects of element refinement, geometrical description, penalty factor on the accuracy, efficiency and stability of IGA are discussed.