Development and Testing of a Post-Installable Deepwater Monitoring System Using Fiber-Optic Sensors

Abstract

This paper addresses the design and development of a fiber-optic monitoring system that can be deployed on existing deep water risers and flow lines; and provides a summary of test article fabrication and the subsequent laboratory testing performed at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration-Johnson Space Center (NASA-JSC).</jats:p> <jats:p>A major challenge of a post-installed instrumentation system is to ensure adequate coupling between the instruments and the riser or flow line of interest. This work investigates the sensor coupling for pipelines that are suspended in a water column (from topside platform to seabed) using a fiber-optic sensor clamp and subsea bonding adhesive. The study involved the design, fabrication, and test of several prototype clamps that contained fiber-optic sensors. A mold was produced by NASA using 3-D printing methods that allowed the casting of polyurethane clamp test articles to accommodate 4-inch and 8-inch diameter pipes. The prototype clamps were installed with a subsea adhesive in a “wet” environment and then tested in the NASA Structures Test Laboratory (STL). The tension, compression, and bending test data showed that the prototype sensor clamps achieved good structural coupling, and could provide high quality strain measurement for active monitoring.