IBP1449-07

COLLAPSE OF SANDWICH PIPES WITH DIFFERENT

ANNULAR MATERIALS
Xavier Castello1, Segen F. Estefen2, Harold R. Leon3, Marcelo C. Fritz4

Copyright 2007, Instituto Brasileiro de Petrleo e Gs - IBP

Este Trabalho Tcnico foi preparado para apresentao na Rio Pipeline Conference & Exposition 2007, realizada no perodo de 2 a
4 de outubro de 2007, no Rio de Janeiro. Este Trabalho Tcnico foi selecionado para apresentao pelo Comit Tcnico do evento,
seguindo as informaes contidas na sinopse submetida pelo(s) autor(es). O contedo do Trabalho Tcnico, como apresentado, no
foi revisado pelo IBP. Os organizadores no iro traduzir ou corrigir os textos recebidos. O material conforme, apresentado, no
necessariamente reflete as opinies do Instituto Brasileiro de Petrleo e Gs, seus Associados e Representantes. de conhecimento e
aprovao do(s) autor(es) que este Trabalho Tcnico seja publicado nos Anais da Rio Pipeline Conference & Exposition 2007.

Resumo
A produo de leo e gs em guas profundas e ultra profundas requer dutos de ao de paredes muito espessas ou
sistemas Pipe-in-Pipe, os quais so caros e difceis de instalar devido ao peso excessivo. O Duto Sanduche um novo
conceito composto de dois dutos de ao concntricos colados a um material polimrico no anular que produz a
combinao de alta resistncia estrutural e isolamento trmico.
Neste trabalho, Dutos Sanduche com dimetros internos tpicos dos empregados na produo offshore so
analisados numericamente para avaliar a resistncia ltima sob presso externa. O material do anular deve ter ambas
propriedades de boa resistncia mecnica e baixa condutividade trmica para satisfazer aos requisitos operacionais.
Alguns materiais polimricos com diferentes propriedades so selecionados. O coeficiente global de troca trmica (U)
foi determinado em cada caso para atender aos requisitos de isolamento trmico de um campo de produo de petrleo
hipottico. Testes experimentais foram realizados para avaliar a adeso entre camadas e estas propriedades foram ento
usadas nas simulaes numricas de resistncia limite.
Resultados anteriores indicam que a presso de colapso fortemente dependente da rigidez do polmero. A
propriedade de adeso tambm importante e pode afetar significativamente a resistncia do duto presso externa
devido ao deslizamento relativo entre camadas. Resultados indicam que Dutos Sanduche otimizados podem minimizar
custos em ao e facilitar a instalao em guas ultraprofundas, mantendo o desempenho trmico e estrutural em relao
aos dutos tipo Pipe-in-Pipe.

Abstract
Oil&gas production in deep and ultra deepwater scenarios require very thick walled steel pipelines or Pipe-in-Pipe
systems, which are expensive and difficult to install due to excessive weight. Sandwich Pipe is a new pipeline concept
composed of two concentric steel pipes separated by and bonded to a polymeric annulus that provide the combination
of high structural strength with thermal insulation.
In this work, Sandwich Pipes with typical inner diameters of those employed in the offshore production are
analyzed numerically to evaluate the ultimate strength under external pressure. The annular material must have both
adequate mechanical strength and low thermal conductivity properties to satisfy the operational requirements. Some
polymeric materials with different properties are selected. The global heat transfer coefficient (U) is determined in each
case to attend to the thermal insulation requirements of a hypothetical oil field. Experimental tests are performed to
evaluate the adhesion between layers and these properties are then used for the ultimate strength numerical simulations.
Previous results indicate that collapse pressure is strongly dependent on the polymer stiffness. The adhesion
property is also important and can affect significantly the pipeline external pressure resistance due to relative
displacement between layers. Results indicate that Sandwich Pipes can minimize steel costs and facilitate the ultra
deepwater installation maintaining the thermal and structural performance in relation to Pipe-in-Pipe systems.

______________________________
1
M.Sc., Doutorando do Programa de Engenharia Ocenica COPPE/UFRJ
2
Ph.D., Professor do Programa de Engenharia Ocenica COPPE/UFRJ
3
B.Sc., Engenheiro de Produto TENARISCONFAB
4
M.Sc., Gerente de Projeto TENARISCONFAB

Rio Pipeline Conference & Exposition 2007

1. Introduction
New concepts for submarine pipelines and risers have been proposed recently in order to achieve flow assurance in
deepwater environment. It is the case of both Pipe-in-Pipe (PIP) and Sandwich Pipe (SP). PIP is composed of two
concentrically mounted steel pipes with the annular space filled with either circulating hot water or materials with
known thermal insulation properties. The objective of this type of pipe is to increase the thermal insulation capacity to
prevent blockage of the line caused by dropping fluid temperature below that required to form paraffin or hydrate. One
of the advantages of PIP system is the possibility of using materials with excellent thermal properties, considering that
the structural integrity is provided independently by the outer and inner steel layers, Grealish and Roddy (2002).
In the case of SP, object of this study, the annular layer characteristics differ from PIP by satisfying simultaneously
mechanical and thermal requirements. Therefore, greater structural strength combined with adequate flow assurance
can be obtained. Sandwich structures are a particular kind of composite characterized by the combination of different
materials bonded together, contributing with their single properties to the global structural performance. Usually, the
sandwich structure is divided in three layers: two external thin and stiff and a central thick and flexible core. The
external layers are bonded to the core to allow the load transfer between the components. Numerical and experimental
studies have been carried out to obtain data about the mechanical behavior of this kind of structure not very well
understood so far, as done by Borselino et.al. (2004) and Sokolinsky et.al. (2002). Sandwich structures, i.e. light and
stiff panels, have been employed in the naval industry mainly, searching the advantages associated with weight
reduction, fuel economy, stability during navigation and corrosion resistance, as mentioned by Mouring (1999). Several
multilayered applications are found with thermal insulation purpose for submarine pipelines and equipment in the
offshore industry, but the benefit of the structural performance of this kind of structure has not been yet pursued for
deepwater pipelines and risers, as it is the case of the present work.
Numerical and experimental studies carried out by Estefen et al. (2005) for the ultimate strength under combined
external pressure and bending indicated that SP are viable for application in water depths up to 3,000 meters. Interlayer contact behavior, i.e. the degree of adhesion, was observed to have significant influence on the collapse pressure.
Among the advantages compared with single wall pipe, it was noted a substantial higher bending capacity for
equivalent external pressure, with similar steel weight and less submerged weight. Structural strength is also strongly
affected by the material of the annular layer. Polypropylene was adopted in that work due to reasonable low cost, good
mechanical properties and relatively low thermal conductivity.
External coating with low thermal conductivity materials, i.e. polyurethane foam, is widely employed in submarine
pipelines. It can be applied in multilayer with different density polymers to combine single properties as thermal,
mechanical, chemical and corrosion protection. However, the water depth limits the application of polymeric foams to
certain depth and the use of PIP systems become necessary if the thermal insulation is an essential requirement. SP
insulation capacity is dependent on the polymer thickness and thermal conductivity. The solid polypropylene, employed
in earlier studies, has lower insulation capacity than other polymer foams, but it has relatively good mechanical strength
Most of the insulation materials are not adequate to be employed in SP annular, because of the poor mechanical
strength. More advanced materials should be studied for this application. Rigid and high strength composite of epoxy
resin and microspheres is selected. The syntactic epoxy foam has almost the same mechanical properties as
polypropylene and half of its thermal conductivity. Inclusion of glass microspheres in the plastic or resin matrix, i.e.
syntactic polymers, reduces both thermal conductivity and density. This hollow spherical fillers, can be produced in
larger sizes, the macrospheres, with typical 10 mm in diameter, which can also be included in the composite. For a third
choice, an extreme application material was also selected for this study, the high density polyimide foam. This material
is characterized by high compressive strength, excellent insulation properties and heat and chemical resistances.
Although, it is indicated for critical operating conditions, the numerical simulation can be implemented to evaluate its
performance in the Sandwich Pipe application.
In this work, three Sandwich Pipes employing different annular materials are numerically collapsed by external
pressure to be compared to a PIP system. They are designed for a hypothetic oil&gas field, requiring 6 in inner
diameter and maximum heat transfer coefficient of 3 W/m2C in 2500 m water depth. The numerical models
incorporate special contact features to simulate the adhesion effects. Adhesion properties were obtained experimentally
for polypropylene bonded to the steel pipes. Field and produced fluid physical and thermal properties employed in this
work were obtained from the references of Su Jian et.al (2005), where a global heat balance analysis for the Sandwich
Pipe with active heating in ultra deepwater was simulated.
Results show clearly the dependence of the Sandwich Pipe concept on thermal conductivity and mechanical strength
properties of the polymer, where 16 in outer pipe is necessary for the polypropylene option, 12 and 10 inches are
obtained for the epoxy foam and polyimide foam. However, all the Sandwich Pipes employ less steel and are lighter
than PIP, being the epoxy option with 60% of PIP steel weight and more than 6 times less submerged weight. The
polyimide annular SP is almost thermally efficient as PIP, employs the next API 5L specified outer pipe, but has 75%
of steel weight. The polypropylene SP is at the limit situation for the U value required, but seems to be the cheapest.
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2. Global Heat Transfer Coefficient (U) Calculation

The global heat transfer coefficient is the generally adopted theoretical method to determine the pipeline insulation
capacity in an useful and simplified way, in which it is assumed several simplifying considerations: steady state flow
and heat transfer regime; radial unidimensional heat transfer; homogeneous and monophasic fluid; no thermal
dependence on material properties and inner and outer pipes wall perfectly smooth and circular (Incropera and DeWitt,
2003).
In order to perform a comparative analysis, some parameters were fixed. It is considered an ultra deepwater
scenario, where the pipeline, materials, water and produced fluid characteristics are presented in Table 1 and 2. The
polymer insulation capacity is evaluated by attending to a maximum overall heat transfer coefficient (U), which is
theoretically calculated by the formulation presented next.
Table 1: Fixed design parameters and steel conductive property
Parameter
Value
Unit
Comments
Water depth
2500
m
ID
6
in
Minimum inner diameter
Pco SF
1.33
Collapse safety factor
Out of Roundness
0.5
%
Ks
54
W/mC
Steel thermal conductivity
Q
10000
BPD
Fluid flow
Maximum required
Umx
3
W/m2C

Property
V
T
Cp
k

Table 2: Fluid properties for convective calculations

Produced
Sea
Unit
Comments
Fluid
Water
(SI)
0.93
0.1
m/s
Flow/Current Speed
80
4
C
Temperature
2.7
4.217
kJ/kgC Specific heat capacity
0.14
0.57
W/mC
Thermal conductivity
Density
800
1025
Kg/m3
Viscosity
0.06712
0.00175
Nm/s2

The heat transfer was calculated by overall heat transfer coefficient, which is useful for composed systems. U is
related to the thermal resistance layers as shown in Equation 1:
U=

1
,
1 Ri
ti Ri
ta
te
Ri
1
Ri

+ ln 1 +
+
ln
1
+
+
ln
1
+
+
hi ks Ri + ti ka Ri + ti + ta ks Ri + ti + ta Ri + ti + ta + te he

(1)

where Ri is the internal radius, ti, te, ta are the inner, outer pipe and annular thicknesses. ks and ka are the thermal
conductivities of steel and annular materials. In order to obtain the thermal convective coefficients from the produced
fluid to the inner pipe and from the external pipe to the surrounding medium, hi and he, it is necessary to calculate the
Prandtl, Reynoulds and Nusselt coefficients, which are functions of all the parameters indicated below:

hi , e = f (Nu, k, Ri )

(2a)

Nu = f (C, m,Re,Pr)

(2b)

Re = f ( , Ri ,V , )

(2c)

Pr = f (Cp, , k )

(2d)

For the inner or outer convection, the Nusselt parameters C and m must be obtained for the adequate Reynolds
range and should consider an internal pipe flow or an external flow transversal to the pipe.
This formulation should be employed for each of the proposed flowline geometries, but first of all, it is used to
determine the minimum outer pipe diameter according to API 5L specification range to attend to the maximum U value
of 3 W/m2C. Doing that, we can eliminate the effort of trying to find the collapse resistance of Sandwich Pipes that do
not attend the insulation requirement.
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2. Numerical Model for External Pressure Resistance

The finite element program ABAQUS (2003) was employed for the structural analyses. Another program written in
FORTRAN language was used initially to generate the mesh with nodes and elements of the Sandwich Pipes with
geometric imperfection in the form of initial ovality. For all models symmetry conditions of one forth-transversal
section and half-length were assumed. In order to simulate the long pipe under external pressure, automatically
generated kinematic coupling equations were used to couple the longitudinal degree of freedom of the transversal
section nodes, inducing plane strains in that direction. Figure 1 shows an example of the model used for the ultimate
strength analysis. One solid element is considered in length and for each metal layer and two solid elements for the
polymer layer. The same numerical model employed in previous works (Castello and Estefen, 2005) has been validated
with experimental tests of small-scale specimens and a parametric study indicated possible geometries for offshore
application which are similar to those here analyzed. Mesh sensivity has also been considered.

Figure 1: Finite element mesh for the Sandwich Pipe model

Initial ovality of 0.5% was adopted in all cases, which is calculated by the expression:
D Dmin
(3)
0 = max
Dmax + Dmin
where D refers to the outer maximum and minimum diameters of the Sandwich Pipe.
Riks method has been employed to determine the external pressure resistance. In all models the mesh was generated
using three-dimensional quadratic solid elements C3D27, with twenty-seven nodes and three degrees of freedom per
node. The polymer was assumed with volumetric incompressible characteristics, therefore elements with mixed
formulation C3D27H were used in the annular layers.
ASTM A678 B steel was used for inner and outer pipes, with yield stress 398 MPa, Poisson coefficient 0.3 and
Young Modulus 205 GPa. It was modeled by plasticity theory of potential flow rule J2 associated with isotropic
hardening and Von Mises yielding criteria for the combined loading models.
Polymers employed in the annular layer were modeled as non-linear elastic material (hyperelastic). A stress-strain
curve is used by the program to simulate material behavior by the Marlow strain energy theory. Mechanical strength of
polymers were evaluated at 25 and 80C temperature, to obtain more realistic results, similar to simulations previously
performed by Souza et.al (2007). The thermal profile of the annular layer was assumed with linear distribution, Figure
1, and the finite element program interpolates linearly the temperature dependent mechanical properties. This is a
conservative assumption, because the real profile for radial systems is logarithmic, so temperature should drop faster as
thickness increase outwards.
2.1. Adhesion Model and Properties
The isotropic Coulomb friction model was adopted to simulate the stick-slip conditions representing bonded and
failure situations in the interface between outer pipe and polypropylene layer. The model uses contact surface element
defined for both polymer and metal layers to allow shear stress and contact pressure to be calculated. For the stick
condition (no relative motion between contacting layers) the equivalent frictional stress calculated by the program for
the surface must be lower than the maximum shear stress. The equivalent stress is calculated as a function of both
tangential stress directions. The maximum shear stress is defined by user, which is useful for the desired purpose. For
the isotropic friction, the directions of slip and frictional stresses coincide. The behavior is assumed in the elastic stick
as long as the equivalent shear stress does not exceed the defined stress.
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Rio Pipeline Conference & Exposition 2007

In later works (Castello and Estefen, 2006 and 2007), the adhesion problem was studied by implementing different
numerical adhesion models in the limit strength analysis. Adhesion properties were evaluated by different specimens.
Some of these tests, Figure 2, were conducted as part of a real scale (prototype) Sandwich Pipes preparation for reeling,
collapse pressure and propagation tests that will be executed in the Subsea Technology Laboratory. The Sandwich Pipe
prototypes were fabricated in TENARISCONFAB under a cooperative development program with COPPE/UFRJ.
The adhesion tests indicated a maximum shear stress of 1.5 MPa in the worst case for the outer pipe and 9 MPa for
the inner pipe. These interfaces are the polypropylene bonded to the outer pipe with an acrylic base structural adhesive
(3M DP8010) and to the inner pipe with the FBE (Fusion Bonded Epoxy) primer and laterally extruded polypropylene.

Figure 2: Outer pipe-polypropylene Sandwich Pipe specimen and inner pipe-polypropylene test specimen
For this numerical study, 1.5 MPa maximum shear stress is adopted in all Sandwich Pipe cases for the inner and
outer pipe interfaces with the polymer layer. This is a very conservative assumption, as epoxy and other polymers are
easily bonded to steel. Also, as the fabrication process is not a primary aspect to be considered here, the worst condition
obtained for polypropylene will be used in case of lack of data for the other selected polymers.

3. Annular Materials
Selected polymers were evaluated at different temperatures, in order to simulate the temperature effect on the
material mechanical behavior when the hot oil is being transported along the flowline. Three polymers were selected to
evaluate different insulation capabilities and their contribution to the Sandwich Pipe collapse resistance.
The traditional and efficient insulation materials used for subsea pipeline coatings, i.e. low density polyurethane
foam, do not have adequate mechanical properties to be used in either deepwater environment or in the Sandwich Pipe
annular, where relatively high loadings are applied. For the Sandwich Pipe concept, the annular material selection
should consider a compromise between insulation capacity and mechanical strength. For preliminary laboratory tests of
limit strength, the solid polypropylene was selected based on low cost, good structural behavior and availability, even if
the insulation property is not adequate and the fabrication process is complicated. Sandwich pipe prototypes were
fabricated by lateral extrusion of polypropylene over the inner pipe (TENARIS, 2007), which was then inserted into the
outer pipe with adhesive application simultaneously. Adhesion of the annular material to the steel pipes is needed for
the structural purpose, mainly because polypropylene is not easy to bond. Regardless of the fabrication difficulty, a
comparison with the very effective insulated Pipe-in-Pipe system will show that polypropylene is not competitive. So, a
better insulation property is needed in the Sandwich Pipe annular material before an optimized design is proposed for
later fabrication and tests.
A more advanced option, the rigid and high strength composite of epoxy resin and microspheres is selected. The
syntactic epoxy foam has almost the same mechanical properties as polypropylene and half of the thermal conductivity,
so it can be a good choice for Sandwich Pipe annular material. The inclusion of glass microspheres on the plastic or
resin matrix, i.e. syntactic polymers, reduces thermal conductivity and density without significant drop of the
mechanical properties in relation to the original product. This hollow spherical fillers can be produced in larger sizes,
the macrospheres, with typically 10 mm in diameter.
An extreme application material was also selected for this study, the high density polyimide foam. This material is
characterized by high compressive strength, excellent insulation properties and both heat and chemical resistance.
Common foams have an attractive fabrication process for the Sandwich Pipe due to easy and well known fabrication
processes. Usually, two components are mixed and spilled inside the annular. Once reaction starts, it expands, forms
foam and gets adhered to the inner and outer pipes. In the case of epoxy syntactic foam, the macrospheres are spilled in
the form, if necessary, the composite of resin, hardener and microspheres are mixed and injected. Then, the form is
heated to accelerate the cure process. The polyimide may not be a pipeline coating commercially available yet, but its
good properties will be used for evaluation here.
These three material options were employed in the Sandwich Pipe numerical models and analyzed regarding
structural strength by collapse pressure and thermal insulation by the global heat transfer coefficient (U). Mechanical
and thermal properties were obtained by tension tests and product specifications, Table 3:
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Rio Pipeline Conference & Exposition 2007

Property
Density
Tensile Strength, Su
Strain @ Su
Tensile Modulus
Thermal Conductivity
Max. Temperature

Table 3: Annular materials properties

Solid
Syntactic Epoxy
HD Polyimide foam
Polypropylene
foam
900
720
500
23
22
26
8.0
8.5
9.08
1000
1580
521
0.20
0.12
0.0657
145
177
300

Units
Kg/m3
MPa
%
MPa
W/mC
C

The temperature dependent mechanical data were obtained by tensile test machine for the polypropylene. Other
materials tensile stress-strain curves were adjusted based on specification properties and individual characteristics.
Polypropylene tensile strength at 80C is 34% of its strength at 25C. Epoxy is less affected by temperature than
polypropylene, and was evaluated at 80C as 50% of the ambient temperature resistance. Polyimide is even more
resistant to temperature and it was considered to have 90% strength.

4. Results and Discussion

First of all, the calculation procedure consisted of the determination of minimum pipeline annular thickness to
attend the maximum U value of 3 W/m2C considering the fixed parameters of minimum inner diameter of 6 in and the
thermal conductivity of steel and polymeric layers selected, in addition to the produced fluid and sea water physical and
thermal properties necessary to obtain the conductive and convective coefficients. The minimum external diameter is
then obtained referring to the API 5L line pipe specifications table, in which is defined the wall thickness to be used in
the collapse pressure calculation by the FE program. Initial ovality of 0.5%, steel mechanical properties of A 678 B and
1.33 safe factor for the collapse pressure are considered in this design stage. The steel pipes thickness is increased until
the required pipe strength is attended. The Sandwich Pipes are designed with the same inner and outer pipe wall
thickness.
For comparison, a Pipe-in-Pipe system is designed employing low density polyurethane foam in the annular, which
has an excellent thermal conductivity of 0.03W/m2C. PIP systems are composed of two concentric steel pipes as it is
Sandwich Pipes, but the annular layer does not have structural propose, so the inner and outer pipes are designed
independently for inner and outer pressures, added by the bending and axial loads. In this study, only the fluid and
external pressure are considered, being the inner pipe dimensioned by API RP 1111 recommended practice for 20 MPa
of design pressure and the outer pipe by the same FE program used for Sandwich Pipe simulation. Also, material, initial
ovality and safety factor are the same as listed in Table 1.
Results of the designed pipes are presented in Table 4, where DNi and DNe are the inner and outer nominal
diameters and ti and te are the wall thicknesses. SP means Sandwich Pipe and PIP means Pipe-in-Pipe system. PP, EP
and PI are polypropylene, syntactic epoxy foam, polyimide foam, as shown in Table 3. PUF means polyurethane foam.
Table 4: Geometric properties of the calculated pipelines
Type
DNi
ti
DNe
te
(in)
(in)
(mm)
(mm)
SP PP
6 5/8
4.775
16
4.775
SP EP
6 5/8
4.369
12 3/4 4.369
SP PI
6 5/8
6.35
10 3/4
6.35
PIP PUF
6 5/8
6.35
8 5/8
12.7
Presented calculation procedure is intended to obtain three Sandwich Pipes to attend to a hypothetic field and
compare them to a PIP system. As the thermal insulation requirement is referred to maximum U value of 3 W/m2C, the
results may vary because of the necessity to select dimensions from the specification table, where jumps between
nominal diameters can cause jumps in insulation results.
Figure 3 shows results of global heat transfer coefficient (U) versus the total pipeline weight for each option. It can
be noted that, although the PIP system is the most efficient in thermal insulation because of its low density annular
material, the dry weight is almost twice the Sandwich Pipe designed with polyimide foam. PIP system is still heavier
than all Sandwich Pipes, due to its independently designed inner and outer steel pipes. Note that the outer pipe diameter
(10 ) of the polyimide case is relatively over dimensioned, yielding a very low U value. This happened because the
previous nominal diameter is not sufficient to attend the maximum U value.
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Rio Pipeline Conference & Exposition 2007

Figure 3: Results of U value versus total weight for each concept

Figure 4: Results of submerged weight versus steel weight for each concept
The most efficient annular material will reduce the pipeline external diameter and, in consequence, reduces the
buoyancy. As PIP has the thicker pipe walls and has the smaller outer size, as shown in Table 4, it is heavier inside
water and spends more in steel material, Figure 4. Moreover, the installation is difficult because high top tension forces
occur at deepwaters. The use of epoxy foam is in a good position on the steel versus submerged weight graph, certainly
because it has a favorable strength to density relation.
Results of dimensionless thermal conductivity versus submerged to total weight relation is presented in Figure 5. It
indicates the efficiency of thermal insulation considering the material property and annular thickness and how much of
the total weight is represented by steel. It can be seen that PIP has the better insulation design having a value close to
unit of dimensionless conductivity. For the polypropylene Sandwich Pipe case a thicker annular or a lower conductivity
property is needed to reduce the dimensionless coefficient. As the polyurethane foam (PUF) is the lighter annular
material, the heavy PIP has its total weight dominated by the steel weight.

Figure 5: Results of dimensionless thermal insulation versus steel to total weight relation
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Rio Pipeline Conference & Exposition 2007

Results show clearly the dependence of the Sandwich Pipe concept on thermal conductivity and mechanical strength
properties of the polymer, where 16 in outer pipe is necessary for the polypropylene option, 12 and 10 inches are
obtained for the epoxy foam and polyimide foam, respectively. However, all the Sandwich Pipes employ less steel and
are lighter than PIP, being the epoxy option with 60% of PIP steel weight and more than 6 times less submerged
weight. The polyimide annular SP is almost thermally efficient as PIP, employs the next API 5L specified outer pipe,
but has 75% of steel weight. The solid polypropylene SP is at the limit situation for the U value required, but seems to
be the cheapest option.
Epoxy and polyimide Sandwich Pipes have an attractive submerged and steel weight, due to the high strength
annular that collaborates to reduce the steel thickness, even if the external diameter is increased in relation to the PIP
case. If it is considered that all options attend the required thermal insulation and the external pressure resistance,
Sandwich Pipe has a significant steel weight reduction, which can also reduce costs and facilitate the installation.
Although the results so far achieved have attended the initial expectations, further numerical and experimental
studies with full scale prototypes have been planned to build up the necessary confidence for use of Sandwich Pipes in
ultra deepwaters.

7. Acknowledgments
The first author would like to acknowledge the National Petroleum Agency (ANP) for the financial support. Special
thanks to TENARISCONFAB for the collaborative project with COPPE/UFRJ on Sandwich Pipes. The support from
the Submarine Technology Laboratory is recognized in both experimental tests and numerical analyses.

8. References
ABAQUS Users and Theory Manuals. (2003). Version 6.4, Hibbitt, Karlsson, Sorensen, Inc.
Borselino, C., Calabrese, L. and Valenza, (2004). A. Experimental and numerical evaluation of sandwich composite
structures. Journal of Composites Science and Technology. Vol 64, pp. 1709-1715.
Castello, X. and Estefen, S.F. (2005). Influncia da adeso entre camadas na resistncia estrutural de dutos sanduche.
Rio Pipeline Conference & Exposition, Instituto Brasileiro de Petrleo e Gs. Rio de Janeiro, RJ. Brasil.
Castello, X. and Estefen, S.F. (2006). Adhesion effect on the ultimate strength of Sandwich Pipes. Proceedings of
OMAE06. 25th International Conference on Offshore Mechanics and Arctic Engineering. Hamburg, Germany.
Castello, X. and Estefen, S.F. (2007). Limit strength and Reeling effects of Sandwich Pipes with bonded layers.
International Journal of Mechanical Sciences. Vol X, .Vol 49-5, 577-588.
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Conference on Offshore Mechanics and Arctic Engineering, Proceedings of OMAE02. Oslo, Norway.
Incropera, F.P. and Witt, D.P., (2003), Fundamentos de transferncia de calor e de massa 5 ed., Editora LTC, Rio.
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Jian, S., Cerqueira, D.R. and Estefen, S.F. (2005). Simulation of transient heat transfer of Sandwich Pipes with active
electrical heating. Journal of Offshore Mechanics and Arctic Engineering. Vol 127, pp. 336-370.
Jian, S. and Estefen, S.F. (2005). Thermal-Hydraulic Analysis of Heavy Oil Transportation in Heated Sandwich
Pipelines. 24th International Conference on Offshore Mechanics and Arctic Engineering, Proceedings of
OMAE05. Halkidiki, Greece.
Mouring, S.E. (1999). Buckling and postbuckling of composite ship panels stiffened with preform frames. Journal of
Ocean Engineering. Vol 26, pp. 793-803.
TENARISCONFAB. (2007). Unidade de Negcios Tubos-Revestimentos. www.tenarisconfab.com.br.
Sokolinsky, V.S., Frostig, Y. and Nutt, S.R. (2002). Special behavior of unidirectional sandwich panels with
transversely flexible core under statical loading. International Journal of Non-Linear Mechanics. Vol 37, 869-895.
Souza, A.R., Netto, T.A. and Pasqualino, I.P. (2007). Materials selection for Sandwich Pipes under the combined effect
of pressure, bending and temperature. 26th International Conference on Offshore Mechanics and Arctic Engineering,
Proceedings of OMAE07. San Diego, California, USA.