Spooling and bending of composite pipes

• Main Author: Tay, Jun Yi.
• Other Authors: Chai Gin Boay
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2013
• Subjects: DRNTU::Engineering
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/54165
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

The objective of this study is to understand primary factors affecting spooling, such as material stiffness of different materials. Four point bending experiments are carried on the multilayered composite tubular structure, without inducing damage to assess the effect of these variables on the spoolability performance. The tubular structure consists of a two layer body with various configurations of the hard and soft materials. Two different materials, such as polyvinyl chloride (PVC) and glass/epoxy is used as the hard external tubular and the soft inner layer is assumed to be made of high density polyethylene (HDPE) thermoplastic. Two different interactions at the interface of the multilayer tubes are considered i.e. bonded and unbonded, which are widely used. The results of load versus deflection graphs and load versus strains graphs show that the bending stiffness of PVC material was found to be less than that of glass/epoxy tubular. The addition of HDPE liner does not affect the stiffness considerably, for both the tubes. The bonded and the unbonded interfaces used in the study did not show much effect in the bending stiffness values. Investigating the results of minimum spool to store the tubular, the PVC shows a coiling radius of 2.5 m. With addition of HDPE, the coiling radius further reduces to 2.08 m for both bonded and unbounded cases. However, the moment i.e. effort required to spool the pipe increases by ~13.65%. Similarly, the glass fiber tubular is found to be having a spool radius of 2.08 m for both with and without HDPE inner layer. Comparing with PVC tubes, the moment required to coil increases by 627%. Thus, the effect of material stiffness on the spoolability performance was studied and analyzed.