In marine operations, internal solitary waves are mostly noted for their influence on exploration drilling activities. This study investigates the influence of the internal solitary wave (ISW) on production risers in catenary and lazy wave configurations. The interaction between the ISW and the risers is approximated by applying a current having the same velocity as the water particle velocity caused by the ISW. The results from this approach show a similar trend to those results from previous studies on drilling riser, indicating that this approach is credible for use as an early verification method. Based on this simple analysis methodology, the resulting bending moment and shear force for the production risers in catenary and lazy wave configurations are not at significant level. This is because catenary production risers are less sensitive to lateral movements compared to a drilling riser. However, the influence of the internal solitary wave may become critical when it occurs simultaneously with the other environmental factors, such as current and surface waves.
In marine operations, internal solitary waves are mostly noted for their influence on exploration drilling activities. The study of Osborne et al. (1978) describes the impact of internal solitary waves during an exploratory drilling operation in the Andaman Sea. Their research later became the pioneer work for studying the influence of the internal waves on marine operations.
Internal solitary waves cause strong shear flow, which produces a significant amount of lateral force and local large lateral displacements of offshore infrastructures like drilling or production risers. The loads exerted by internal solitary waves on offshore infrastructures have become an important topic in recent years, i.e. through studies by Cai et al. (2003) (2008; 2006); Lee and Yan (2012); Deng et al. (2015).
However, most of these previous studies only discuss the impact of solitons on a drilling riser or on offshore structures.
