A steel catenary riser (SCR) is a common method of connecting a subsea pipeline to a deepwater floating or fixed oil production platform.
That is because in the scale of depth of the ocean, the bending stiffness of a rigid pipe has little effect on the shape of the suspended span of an SCR.
[1] In preliminary considerations, in spite of using conventional, rigid steel pipe, the shape of the SCR can be also approximated with the use of ideal catenary equations,[2] when some further loss of accuracy is acceptable.
Complex dynamics, hydrodynamics, including vortex induced vibrations (VIVs) and physics of pipe interactions with the seabed are involved.
That work started before 1969, and it was reflected in internal Shell documents, which are confidential, but a patent on an early 'Bare Foot' SCR design was issued.
SLWRs were first installed on a turret moored FPSO offshore Brazil (BC-10, Shell) in 2009,[10] even though Lazy Wave configuration flexible risers had been in a wide use for several decades beforehand.
The deepest application of Lazy Wave SCRs (SLWRs) is at present on the Stones turret-moored FPSO (Shell), which is moored in 9,500 feet water depth in the Gulf of Mexico.
[16] Proving to Shell that the SCR concept was technically sound for use on the Auger TLP was a major achievement of Dr. Carl G. Langner.