Structural Reliability Analysis Method for Assessing the Fatigue Capacity of Subsea Wellhead Connectors

Abstract

Subsea Wellheads are the male part of an 18 3/4” bore connector used for connecting subsea components such as drilling BOP, XT or Workover systems equipped with a female counterpart — a wellhead connector. Subsea wellheads have an external locking profile for engaging a preloaded wellhead connector with matching internal profile. As such connection is made subsea, a metal-to-metal sealing is obtained, and a structural conduit is formed. The details of the subsea wellhead profile are specified by the wellhead user and the standardized H4 hub has a widespread use. In terms of well integrity, the wellhead connector is a barrier element during both well construction (drilling) activities and life of field (production). Due to the nature of subsea drilling operations, a wellhead connector will be subjected to external loads. Fatigue and plastic collapse due to overload are therefore two potential failure modes. These two failure modes are due to the cyclic nature of the loads and the potential for accidental and extreme single loads respectively. The safe load the wellhead connector can sustain without failure can be established by deterministic structural capacity methods. This paper outlines how a generic and probabilistic engineering method; Structural Reliability Analysis, can be applied to a subsea wellhead connector to estimate the probability of fatigue failure (PoF). As the wellhead connector is a mechanism consisting of a plurality of parts the load effect from cyclic external loads is influenced by uncertainty in friction, geometry and pre-load. Further, there is a inter dependence between these parameters that complicates the problem. In addition to these uncertainties, uncertainties in the fatigue loading itself (from rig and riser) is also accounted for. This paper presents results from applications of Structural Reliability Analysis (SRA) to a wellhead connector and provides experiences and learnings from this case work.