A Steel Catenary Riser (SCR)

A Steel Catenary Riser (SCR) is a compliant riser and it is named after its catenary shape. SCR uses
a rigid, flexible steel pipe with substantial bending stiffness to either produce well fluids from the
subsea wellhead to the platform and production floating vessel or conduct production fluids in a
vice versa manner during injection. Due to the scale depth of ocean, the bending stiffness of the
rigid steel pipe has minimal effect on the shape of the suspended span of an SCR where its shape is
governed by weight, buoyancy and hydrodynamic forces due to currents and waves. Initially, SCR
was utilized as export lines until year 1994, Shell was the first operator to deploy SCR on its Auger
Tension Leg Platform at 872m.
Nowadays, SCR technology has emerged as one of the most viable solutions for deepwater field
development and is most suitable for spar, semisubmersible, and deep-draft semisubmersible. SCR
is cheaper to produce at longer, larger sections compared to flexible risers and is highly resistant
to internal and external pressure even in larger depths. However, SCR has less resistant to fatigue
when they are light in water due to its high sensitivity to dynamic motions.
Selection of riser configuration can make a significant difference in achieving feasibility of the SCR
application.

Figure : Free Hanging

SCR

Free Hanging SCR

A low cost, simple and widely used configuration. It is made up a rigid pipe
welded directly onto a static rigid pipeline several 100 meters from the
touchdown point (TDP) or via anchored subsea structure. The riser is
connected by stress or flex joint at the floater. Due to its its weight in free
span and dynamic motions from the floater, free hanging SCR suffers high
fatigue and excessive bending moment at the top end and at TDP. The riser
too faces VIV. VIV is coped by VIV-strakes to reduce vortex-induced
vibrations by high current speeds, while weight-distribution concept is
deployed to reduce fatigue damage. This is done by varying weight along
the riser, with heavy cross-section at the straight part and lightest possible
cross-section in the touchdown zone (TDZ). The two methods commonly
used to distribute weight are external coating with varying density and
clump weights along parts of the riser. The downside of varying weight
configuration is it increases the hang-off load and the dynamic axial stress
closer to the hang-off.

Figure : Weight
distribution Concept

Figure : Lazy Wave

SCR

Figure : Sub-surface

Lazy Wave SCR

Excessive fatigue damage of free hanging SCR resulting in the introduction
of Lazy Wave SCR. It was first installed by Subsea 7 at Shells BC-10 project
in Brazil in 2009. The mechanism is by adding buoyancy elements close to
the TDP to reduce the heave transmitted from the facility, subsequently
minimize the stress at the Top End and TDP. Lazy wave configuration is
more expensive then free hanging although both of them have the same
subsea installations due to the addition of buoyancy elements.
Buoyancy-Supported SCR
The configuration consists of a large sub-surface buoy, which is anchored to
the
seabed by tethers. Multiple SCRs are supported by the sub-surface buoy
and are connected to the floater by non-bonded flexible jumpers. The
advantage of this configuration is nearly zero stresses on SCRs due to the
effective absorption of the dynamics from the floater. The SCR will behave
ike a long free-spanning line when responding to fatigue damage from the
VIV due to local currents. The riser design can be further optimized by the
deployment of mechanical-lined pipe thanks to its minimal dynamics
response on SCR.