Three-Dimensional Numerical Simulations of Severe Gas-Liquid Slugging Flows in S-Shaped Riser

S-shaped riser may be used for connecting a subsea well and floating platform for the multiphase oil-gas flow transportation. A buoyancy module is installed in the longitudinal direction of the riser section enabling a hog and sag bend arrangement. This design offers a solution to decouple motion from the boundaries and lower the riser stresses. There is an increasing tendency to implement S-shaped risers for offshore platforms operating in deep waters or harsh environments. However, a generic S shape may cause a terrain-induced, severe slugging under certain practical operational/geometrical conditions and flow rates. This phenomenon leads to unstable and intermittent slug flows creating fluctuations of pressure, fluid fraction and velocity components. In this paper, the flow pattern characteristics and formation process of a severe slugging in an S-shaped rigid riser transporting the liquid-gas flows are studied using 3-D computational fluid dynamics simulations based on a finite volume method. Numerical results are validated by comparing with experimental results in the literature. Severe slugging behaviors are presented and discussed.