Nonlinear contact between inner walls of deep sea pipelines in buckling process

In order to study buckling propagation mechanism in deep sea pipelines, the contact between pipeline’s inner walls in buckling process was studied. A two-dimensional ring model was used to represent the pipeline and a nonlinear spring model was adopted to simulate the contact between inner walls. Based on the elastoplastic constitutive relationship and the principle of virtual work theory, the coupling effect of pipeline’s nonlinear large deformation and wall contact was included in the theoretical analysis with the aid of MATLAB, and the application scope of the theoretical model was also discussed. The calculated results show that during the loading process, the change in external pressure is closely related to the distribution of section stress, and once the walls are contacting each other, the external pressure increases and then remains stable after it reaches a specific value. Without fracture, the pipeline section will stop showing deformation. The results of theoretical calculations agree well with those of numerical simulations. Finally, in order to ensure reliability and accuracy of the theoretical results, the collapse pressure and propagation pressure were both verified by numerical simulations and experiments. Therefore, the theoretical model can be used to analyze pipeline’s buckling deformation and contact between pipeline’s inner walls, which forms the basis for further research on three-dimensional buckling propagation.